Radiohead in Print: Read All About It

When Radiohead announced its new album, ''The King of Limbs,'' last month, it did so in the high-tech, media-smart way its fans have come to expect: a brief note online, followed by a rush when the songs were made available for download a day earlier than expected.

Phase 2 of the promotion is a lot less 21st century. On Tuesday, the day that CD and vinyl LP versions of ''The King of Limbs'' were released (along with another release of the download), the band distributed copies of a free 12-page newspaper called The Universal Sigh at 61 locations around the world, including three in Manhattan. Although there's little in the newspaper that explicitly advertises the album (the title and a few scattered lyrics are all that one reader/listener could find on a quick perusal), its existence to some extent also promotes yet another iteration of ''The King of Limbs'': a deluxe edition, which costs about $50 and includes two vinyl records, a CD, a download and artwork ''all in a special 'newspaper' format,'' the band said.The Universal Sigh was released at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, and at about 1:20, the Times Square distribution spot was fairly quiet. Three young people, one with an old-fashioned paperboy bag slung over his shoulder, held up copies of the paper and asked passers by, ''Are you a Radiohead fan?'' Most people apparently weren't, because a reporter worried about being 20 minutes late to the release had an easier time getting a copy than one usually would for discounted Broadway tickets at the TKTS booth.

The contents of The Universal Sigh are a bit like Radiohead's liner notes: abstract, wordy, pretty serious, filled with scratchy artwork, and perhaps hinting at some kind of mystery. New Musical Express, the British music magazine, did its best with a ''What Does It All Mean?'' item. The magazine points out that like the album itself, the newspaper is filled with references to nature, including stories written by the authors Jay Griffiths and Robert Macfarlane. There are also references to Norse mythology and Goethe, and drawings of what might be ghosts, or maybe fish (or bats).

Radiohead's own answer to those questions might be included in a poem called ''Across the Great Divide!'':Why does this not add up?A spider to a fly.A universal sigh.A giant turtle's eyes.Don't blow your mind with why.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES)