Today, I finally got the chance to hear Jonny Greenwood's new soundtrack for the recently released film entitled, Norwegian Wood, and also to hear a very interesting interview with him courtesy of this website: http://www.greenplastic.com/. During the chat, he discussed how the plot of the story, which involves a music teacher who has a breakdown and has to re-learn how to play, influenced the composition of the music. And having given it a couple of listens, I can clearly hear what he's talking about (and the music's wonderful, by the way). But it also got me thinking about a central aspect of Radiohead's music: they try very hard to never rely on assumptions, to think as if the song they're working on is the first of its kind, maybe even the first they've ever played. It's the right way to proceed, because if assumptions are allowed into the composing process (and even a unit as small as a chord or scale fragment can be an assumption), creativity and originality get compromised, and it can seem like there's not much that hasn't been done in music. In fact, very little has been done in music, but as has always been the case, only fresh thinking and effort can get to the ground-breaking stuff. Here's a piece from the above soundtrack that exemplifies all of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xYbK53vs2s.

Have I mentioned how much I like Jonny Greenwood as a musician? And that I'm a huge Radiohead fan? And that I'm really looking forward to their next album release? I thought so. Well, today I heard a new piece by Mr. Greenwood - part of the soundtrack he wrote for a Japanese film called Norwegian Wood - which confirmed further why I hold the three opinions listed above. It's a short work for solo guitar that is part traditional and part other-worldly, like a lot of Radiohead's music. I haven't gotten very far with analyzing it yet - that'll take a while - but I'm quite sure that it's another example of the use of asymmetrical formal concepts giving their music the rare (make that extremely rare) quality of sounding different with every listen. And the title, "Don't Read What Hasn't Been Baptized by Time", might be as beautiful as the music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-O9pC3f4OU.