Last year's Sonic Highways contained eight tracks, each recorded in a different US city, and each accompanied by a documentary about that city's musical heritage, while previous outing Wasting Light was recorded using 20th-century equipment in a lo-fi setting.

Now Hawkins tells the NME: "It's not enough to just make a f***ing record any more. It used to be a simple process of writing a batch of songs, recording them and putting them out.You'd make three videos. If they were good MTV would play them and you'd sell some records. Now you need to do something different."