“Within an hour, he got back to me going, ‘This is amazing. I’d love to come and play it.’ A week later he was in my house”: How Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien got hooked on one of the world’s most unconventional guitars

NAMM 2025 was marked by some pretty eye-opening innovations. However, perhaps one of the most off-kilter offerings was the Circle Guitar by Circle Instruments, described as “a hyper instrument that transforms what a guitar can do.”

Essentially, it's an electro-mechanical guitar that uses a MIDI-enabled physical sequencer to strum the strings. As the name suggests, there's a spinning wheel covered in tiny plectrums which create “rhythms impossible to replicate by hand” – all in the spirit of freeing players to go beyond the traditional realm of guitar playing.

The Circle Guitar managed to attract the attention of a few guitarists with a penchant for all things unconventional – among them, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien.

“When I discovered Aphex Twin, the first thing about it was that he was sort of an enigma,” creator Anthony Dickens tells Guitar.com. “And then I heard that he made his own instruments, and I was like, fucking hell, that is cool! That is the ultimate freedom, isn’t it?”

After toiling away at the Circle Guitar project since shortly before the pandemic, Dickens happened to come across a That Pedal Show episode with the Radiohead guitarist, during which he asserted that searching for new sounds and textures is more important than the pursuit of technical virtuosity. That appreciation for out-there guitar innovations was primed for some Circle Guitar experimentation – and it turned out to be right up his street.

An introduction to Circle Guitar - YouTube

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His comment struck a chord with Dickens, and he quickly slid into O'Brien's DMs, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“Within an hour, he got back to me going, ‘Wow, this is amazing. I’d love to come and play it,’” Dickens recalls. “And a week later, he was in my house!”

O'Brien would later champion the Circle Guitar, saying, “Occasionally, you see or get to play something that makes you think in a totally different way. This is an extraordinary new guitar, and I’ve already put an order in to buy the first one.”

Alongside O'Brien, Phish bassist Mike Gordon, Idles' Lee Kiernan, Muse's Matt Bellamy, and producers Paul Epworth and John Congleton are all in on the action. And if you want to see what the fuss is all about, there's currently a waiting list to get your own Circle Guitar, and it costs £7,995 (approx. $10,000) apiece.

For more details, head to Circle Instruments.