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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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Radiohead

What exactly happened with the “These are My Twisted Words” release?

Jonny in OxonThe dust is settling but there is still speculation and rumor-mongering about what exactly has happened over the past few days. For those late to the show, you should check out the recent posts here at GP to get you up to speed.

We all had a good feeling that something was going to happen today. Some people were convinced that a new EP would be released. We certainly hoped that would be the case. Alas, it wasn’t and of course there was a bit of disappoint in many people’s eyes. Whatever people, we have a new Radiohead song, and a good one at that.

So, what really happened? We reached out to the band’s management for a statement but so far, nothing. What happened really comes down to two scenarios: The band leaked the mp3 last week or the band didn’t leak the mp3 last week.

Let’s just say for a moment that the band did leak it out. That would be an easy thing to assume as it’s crazy, weird, and something that Radiohead would do. It’s a big “fuck you” to the record industry, blah blah. And while they are at it, they have it be leaked through what.cd with a confusing nfo file which sets the internet abuzz with rumors, speculation, and frankly, ridiculousness. If you were in a huge band, wouldn’t it be kind of humorous to watch your fans trying to decipher each and every little detail? All types of press picked up on this leak. It was even played on Sirius XM radio as the “new Radiohead song from the upcoming Wall of Ice EP.” The point is, this thing went viral like crazy. I mean, look at Jonny’s new photo on DAS with the word “Conspirator” on it. Sneaky, sneaky.

What doesn’t make sense to us is why the band would leak it out themselves only to release it officially today. One of our mods at Mortigi Tempo, Pennyroyalty, put it best:

“Deliberately leaking one track ahead of officially releasing just that one track is not exactly what i’d call a masterstroke, actually i think it would be kind of silly. if it’s true then they just turned the release of a cool new song into a pretty underwhelming event for me, although hey the tracing paper is nice and all. anyway i suggest people don’t get on their high horses about their genius publicity move just yet.”

So this leads us to the other scenario: The band had nothing to do with the leak. We hear all the time about music getting leaked out before it is released. It happened with Hail to the Thief. What usually happens is someone at the plant where the make the CDs takes a copy home and maybe burns one for a friend. Then that friends decides to rip it to their computer and share with a couple of friends and so on. It happens all the time. What’s puzzling about this is that this is a digital release. Unless we’re missing something, there is no physical CD that could have been duplicated somewhere like what usually happens. If this thing was leaked, then it must have been someone getting their hands on a mp3 early. How does that happen? Did someone in the band send it out to friend for a listen and it leaked that way? Then, because it was already out, the band decided to officially release it today?

We’re not convinced of either scenario just yet and hopefully the band will make some sort of announcement soon. Or maybe we shouldn’t care and just enjoy the new track. 🙂

Here’s a pretty solid recap of the whole saga.

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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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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.

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Jonny Greenwood

Radiohead loves Ondes Martenot

Jonny Greenwood & Thomas Bloch
Jonny Greenwood & Thomas Bloch

Did you know that Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is one of a handful of musicians around the world that can masterfully play the Ondes Martenot? Yep.

News24.com has an article about the instrument which you may like to read. Here’s a bit to get you started:

What do Olivier Messiaen, Radiohead and Mars Attacks the movie have in common? The Ondes Martenot, an electronic keyboard that has just turned 80 and is the prequel to the synthesiser.

The instrument dates back to 1928, the brainchild of Frenchman Maurice Martenot, a cello player and wartime radio transmissions expert determined to turn the screech of airwaves into music.

Contemporary composers such as Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Arthur Honegger and Andre Jolivet have all written for the Ondes Martenot, which produces one note of variable pitch along with weird and wonderful sounds perfect for sci-fi movies such as Mars Attacks.

But pop musicians including Radiohead and Gorillaz too are fans of the trailblazing instrument that resembles an electronic organ surrounded by several loudspeakers.

In front of the central keyboard, which produces vibrato effects, is a ribbon which the ondist plays by placing a ring on a finger, recreating the undulating frequencies of the musical saw.

You can read the full article at news24.com.