Radiohead’s bunker debut
Radiohead has debuted a new film-and-art installation at Coachella housed in a 17,000‑square‑foot underground bunker beneath the polo fields — an unusually large, site‑specific reveal that’s being presented as part of the festival’s art program. (musically.com).
Coachella’s strangest new venue this year is not a tent or a stage but a buried concrete room under the Empire Polo Club, and Radiohead is using it first. The band’s new project, “Motion Picture House: Kid A Mnesia,” opens there on April 10 as part of the festival’s art program. (musically.com) The space is unusually large for festival art: 17,000 square feet underground with 38-foot ceilings. Coachella ticket holders can enter the bunker during both festival weekends, April 10 to 12 and April 17 to 19, 2026. (yahoo.com) What’s inside is a 75-minute large-format film built from artwork Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood made while Radiohead were creating the albums “Kid A” in 2000 and “Amnesiac” in 2001. The soundtrack is drawn from the original multitrack recordings from those sessions rather than a standard album playback. (nme.com) That title goes back to “Kid A Mnesia,” the 2021 reissue that bundled “Kid A,” “Amnesiac,” and a third release called “Kid Amnesiae.” In 2021, Radiohead also released a virtual “Kid A Mnesia Exhibition” on computers and game consoles after pandemic conditions blocked the physical version they had first imagined. (variety.com) This new bunker version is the physical build-out of that older idea. Radiohead’s team describes “Motion Picture House” as the real-world version of the virtual exhibition, with gallery spaces for full-scale Yorke and Donwood artwork around the film. (nastylittleman.com) Coachella has long treated art as part of the festival’s identity, commissioning large works across the grounds each year rather than limiting the event to music stages. The festival’s own art page says its curators bring in artists, architects, and designers to turn the polo fields into a changing public space. (coachella.com) What makes this one different is that it is not just a sculpture you pass on the way to a set. It is a timed, enclosed, feature-length experience, and outside the festival it will keep running in city residencies with two-hour slots that include the 75-minute film and extra gallery time. (variety.com) After Coachella, the installation moves to Brooklyn from May 6 to May 31, Chicago from July 30 to August 23, Mexico City from October 27 to November 15, and San Francisco from January 14 to February 7, 2027. Radiohead are not billed to perform at those stops or at Coachella; the project is being presented as an audiovisual installation rather than a concert. (variety.com) The pairing makes sense once you remember what “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” were in the first place. Those records were never just songs on a tracklist; Yorke and Donwood built them with dense visual worlds, fragments of text, and a cold digital mood that often felt more like walking through a building than listening to a rock album. (radiohead.com)
