Category: Jonny Greenwood

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Jonny Greenwood

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood to score film of Haruki Murakami novel

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood will reportedly return to film scoring, writing music for an adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The score will be based on a composition Greenwood wrote for the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Greenwood’s last foray into feature films was his Grammy-nominated soundtrack for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Just as that score was derived from an earlier work, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, Greenwood’s composition expands upon an orchestral piece called Dogwood, which debuted last month.

The maverick musician announced the project at BBC’s Maida Vale studios, following Dogwood’s premiere. “I wrote [the] piece mostly in hotels and dressing rooms while touring with Radiohead,” he told TwentyFourBit. “This was more practical than glamorous – lots of time sitting indoors, lots of instruments about – and aside from picking up a few geographical working titles, I [don’t] think that it had any effect where, on tour, it was written.” Greenwood is also listed on the film’s Imdb page.

Murakami’s 1987 novel, translated into English in 2000, follows Toru Watanabe’s nostalgic recollections of the late 60s. These memories are spurred by the sitar-strung sound of the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood. The film version is directed by Anh Hung Tran, and will be released in Japan in December.

In the meantime, the Maida Vale performance of Dogwood will be re-broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on 19 March. Greenwood’s first movie score, for the 2003 documentary Bodysong, will also soon see an encore: it will be released on DVD on 22 March.

(from guardian.co.uk)

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Jonny Greenwood Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke Confirms Two New Tracks on September 21

Thom wrote on DAS today confirming the rumor that two new tracks will be available to download soon. The rumor had been that September 22 was the release date, but it appears that the 21st is the correct one. Also, Thom makes no mention of either track being associated with the Twilight sequel New Moon. Take it away, Thom:

Dear Sir or Madam

This is to inform you of the release of two more bits of work shortly.
They are loosely under the Thom Yorke name this time, although these days its all getting kind of blurry.
FeelingPulledApartbyHorses is written & played by Jonny and I and is a radical rework of an old tune thats been kicking around without a home since 2001? i think.
The Hollow Earth is a bass menace that was born out of the Eraser period but needed a little more time.
Both were produced by Nigel Godrich as ever. And mastered by Bob Ludwig.
They are being put out on 12″ with sliced sleeve by Stanley and Tchock.
My sources tell me this will be available from the 21st of September if you’re interested.. On sale in the w.a.s.t.e part of our website (with a gratis download.)
Or you can go buy it in a good record shop if you are lucky enough to have one near you.
Then later on there will be like a normal download thing i think around the 6th of Oct through the usual channels.

And so it goes. all the best

Thom

In addition to this, Thom will performing at the Age of Stupid event on September 21. From Paste Magazine:

The U.S. premiere of director Franny Armstrong’s eco docudrama, The Age of Stupid, will be bolstered by a unique worldwide, in-theater event on Sept. 21, including live satellite coverage of field scientists across the globe, spanning from New York, to the Himalayas and all the way to a remote, Indonesian rain forest.

The Age of Stupid LIVE from New York is hitting 444 movie theaters nationwide and begins with a viewing of the film, a dramatization that forecasts the state of life on Earth decades into the future, where warnings of climate change were ignored over the years. The story is told through a global archivist in 2055, played by Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (Usual Suspects).

A panel discussion will follow the showing, and will feature an interesting mix of world-renown scientists, political figures and celebrities, including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson. The event will wrap up with a performance by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, who will be playing an acoustic version of the film’s title track.

The evening’s most resourceful festivity will be a live, green-carpet procession in New York’s Winter Garden, where guests will breeze in via bicycle, solar car, rickshaw, sailboats (!?) and other green means of transportation.

The Age of Stupid LIVE from New York is presented by NCM Fathom and Spanner Films in high definition. It debuts Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. Tickets are available at participating theaters and online at FathomEvents.com.

Because of the same date, it’s easier for us to think that “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses” and “The Hollowed Earth” have nothing to do with New Moon, and everything to do with Age of Stupid. What do you think?

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Jonny Greenwood Radiohead

It’s official: “These are My Twisted Words”

these-are-my-twisted-words-artwork

Jonny made an announcement on DAS releasing “These are My Twisted Words”:

So here’s a new song, called ‘These Are My Twisted Words’.

We’ve been recording for a while, and this was one of the first we finished.

We’re pretty proud of it.

There’s other stuff in various states of completion, but this is one we’ve been practicing, and which we’ll probably play at this summer’s concerts. Hope you like it.

Download the audio here or torrent here.

Included in the download is a txt file, a tiff image, and a pdf that reads: “this is an artwork file to accompany the audio file. we suggest you print these images out on 80gsm tracing paper or you printer will eat it as we discovered. you could put them in an order that pleases you.”

Oh, and wallofice.com? Big ole heap of fail. The guy who purchased the domain, Reshad Bashir, has posted up a mp3 which isn’t Radiohead. It sounds more like some of the music he creates. Nice try.
UPDATE: looks like the mp3 on wallofice.com was just taken down.

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Jonny Greenwood Radiohead

Interview with Jonny

Jonny GreenwoodThe Australian has posted an interview they did with Jonny recently. The band has been in their Oxford studio rehearsing for the upcoming festival tour dates later this month. They’ve also been recording new songs. “There’s a bunch of stuff slowly growing, some more finished than others,” Jonny says.

Two years ago, no longer signed to a major record label, the band released In Rainbows online, inviting fans to pay whatever they thought the album was worth. It was a bold move, seen as undermining the recording industry and testing new modes of distribution. Where Radiohead goes next, though, is less certain. The members aren’t even sure whether to release another conventional album at all.

“Traditionally we’d be looking for 10 or 11 songs and putting them together, but that doesn’t feel as natural as it used to, so I don’t know what we’ll do. Maybe we’ll find four songs that work together and we’ll call that a release. I don’t know,” Greenwood says.

After changing direction so many times, it’s perhaps no surprise that Radiohead finds itself, once again, at a crossroads. After starting off in 1993 with Pablo Honey and then the more accessible The Bends, the band established its place at the cutting edge of contemporary music with the landmark OK Computer. It then headed off in new directions with Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief, embracing alternative forms of rock and electronics before 2007’s In Rainbows. Meanwhile, digital music and downloads changed the way music was consumed.

During the past few days, music circles around the world have been in a flutter after the band’s singer, Thom Yorke, told an American magazine he was “not very interested in the album at the moment”. Greenwood confirms that a conceptual shift is under way. “No one knows how to release music any more, including us,” he says. “How to put it together, in what format, how long. We’re in the dark as much as anyone I think.”

Apart from that, Greenwood isn’t giving much away. He doesn’t seem worried though: Radiohead has always had a thing for reinvention. It’s no wonder, then, that the 38-year-old sounds relaxed as he discusses one of his other projects.

Could “These Are My Twisted Words” be one of the new songs Jonny talks about?

Read the full interview…

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Ed O'Brien In Rainbows Jonny Greenwood Phil Selway Radiohead The King of Limbs Thom Yorke tour

Spinner: Are Radiohead Just Hitting the Pause Button?

Excellent recap of what’s been going on lately in Radioheadland from Spinner about the whole “Radiohead is not making any more albums” hysteria:

Is the world over-reacting about the possible “no albums” future of Radiohead?

Media reports have barked, blared and bleated this week that the band is turning its back on albums after an interview with frontman Thom Yorke in the Believer magazine hit the internet.

“None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again,” Yorke told the magazine. “Not straight off … It worked with ‘In Rainbows’ because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us.”

Yorke then spoke of his desire to release an orchestral EP, using multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood’s increasingly impressive talents as an arranger.

Playing at the 7 Worlds Collide show at London’s Dingwalls on Tuesday, drummer Phil Selway showed an impressive voice as he sang two songs ‘The Ties That Bind Us’ and ‘The Witching Hour’.

He and guitarist O’Brien spent a month in New Zealand in December and January helping with the Neil Finn-helmed album ‘The Sun Came Out’.

RadioheadSelway later told Spinner he will record his debut solo album in Radiohead’s studio in September.

Radiohead are currently rehearsing for their appearances at Reading and Leeds festivals later this month, the latest in a string of live dates since the digital-then-physical release of seventh studio album ‘In Rainbows’ at the end of 2007.

It seems that amid the revelations the band want to do more single-song releases or EPs — like the recent ‘Harry Patch (In Memory Of)’ — Yorke’s proviso “not straight off” has been glossed over.

The torturous recording of ‘OK Computer’ (1997) and the subsequent touring put Yorke in a less than sanguine mood, but after a three-year gap the band responded with not one album but two (‘Kid A’, ‘Amnesiac’) with a little over a year.

At the 7 Worlds Collide show, as Neil Finn rounded off the various band members recording achievements, guitarist Ed O’Brien offered a shaky hand single for “maybe” when Finn mentioned Radiohead might be working on a new record. That’s not a no, but a maybe.

Interviewed on the UK’s BBC Breakfast TV news on Wednesday, Selway left the question regards “no new albums” unanswered.

Maybe Radiohead need to attend to some personal projects before they reconvene to make another album, with all the effort that requires. It would be churlish not to let them.

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Amnesiac Jonny Greenwood OK Computer Phil Selway Radiohead

Radiohead ‘could have soundtracked Potter’

I know, this really has no substance, but it’s interesting.

From Digital Spy:

Daniel Radcliffe has said that the albums of Radiohead could have been a perfect soundtrack for the Harry Potter movies.

The actor told the Daily Record that it was “almost uncanny” how appropriate the records were to his character in the films.

Radcliffe said: “Harry’s darkness is a very specific type of darkness and it’s Radiohead’s OK Computer or Amnesiac, and it’s Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible and Hope of the States’ The Lost Riots and it’s stuff like that.

“It’s kind of angry and epic. It’s angry in the sense that your life is beyond your control and you are in the middle of this maelstrom of politics and power. You have no control over that, and that’s where part of Harry’s anger comes from.”

He added that he would like Icelandic band Sigur Rós to work on the score for the final movie in the series, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows.

“They would be great, wouldn’t they? It’s so right, it’s got the amount of grandeur and majesty. It’s epic and it’s magical and it’s playing the guitar with the violin bow and… ah God, it would be great,” Radcliffe said.

You may remember that Phil and Jonny played in the Wyrd Sisters band in the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie.