Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich forms new band, Ultraísta

Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich has started a band, Ultraísta , with a debut single issued this week. According to Pitchfork , Ultraísta is a collaboration with drummer Joey Waronker and 24-year-old Laura Bettinson, formerly of Dimbleby & Capper and now recording as Femme . Bettinson and Godrich have been working together for some time: in 2010, when Bettinson was a student at London's Goldsmiths College, she described working with the producer. "Nigel is a challenge," she told eGigs . "He pushes very hard and harder until he gets the results he wants." Judging from a post on Ultraísta's blog , the band is named after Spain's Ultraist literary movement, best known through the work of Jorge Luis Borges. Their music is substantially less esoteric: Smalltalk, Ultraísta's first song, recalls Stereolab and Zero 7. Besides their sparse pages on Twitter , Tumblr , SoundCloud , Facebook and YouTube , there's not much information available on Ultraísta or their plans. The band appears to be unsigned, and it's not clear whether they are working on an album. The only description of the project, from another 2010 interview with Bettinson, is "writing/drinking/moaning about the world with a couple of [Nigel's] friends from LA". Though best known as a producer, Godrich has performed with Beck, Paul McCartney, Zero 7, the Hotrats and Brazzaville. He and Waronker also play in Thom Yorke's band, Atoms for Peace.