Recording rooms and a connected painting barn bring music and album imagery into the same Provençal working landscape.
At La Fabrique outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Radiohead’s recording and Stanley Donwood’s painting occupied neighbouring spaces. Adam Thorpe’s studio visit for the Times Literary Supplement records a working landscape of rooms, courtyards and barns. Donwood’s own account explains how a wire carrying the music across a courtyard made that proximity part of the album’s visual creation.
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These historical places remain in the list while their map positions are researched.
Thorpe described La Fabrique as a former nineteenth-century mill, with sunlit recording rooms containing rugs, fireplaces, furniture and books alongside the equipment. Colin Greenwood showed him analogue and digital tools and spoke about looping and layering. The adapted building housed one stage of the album’s work.[2]
A rhythm assembled from objects
During the visit, Thorpe watched Jonny Greenwood working with a laptop and a homemade apparatus whose small hammers struck objects. Yoghurt cartons, tubs, bells and a miniature tambourine contributed to a rhythm while Ed O’Brien listened. Thorpe’s observation records an experiment, without identifying a finished album track.[2]
Music crosses the courtyard
Donwood recalled working in a barn across a courtyard, with a wire from the recording studio feeding large speakers. He described beginning alongside the band rather than receiving a finished concept or brief. The arrangement allowed painting to develop while the music was still being made. For Donwood, immersion in the sound helped explain the fit between image and record. The courtyard connection made the visual work part of the same evolving creative environment.[1]
During the sessions reported in May 2016; exact session date not established
Adam Thorpe observed Jonny Greenwood experimenting with a homemade sound machine, yoghurt cartons, tubs, bells and a miniature tambourine at La Fabrique outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence during the sessions reported for A Moon Shaped Pool.[2]
Donwood paints with a live audio connection to the studio
During the A Moon Shaped Pool sessions
Stanley Donwood recalled painting for A Moon Shaped Pool in a Provençal barn across a courtyard from the recording studio, with a wire feeding studio audio to speakers; Thorpe identified the connected painting barn at La Fabrique.[1][2]
A residential location: respect the occupants’ privacy.
Reading the place today
La Fabrique is a private recording property. The connection is described at studio-property scale, with no public route to the painting barn or recording rooms.
