So much has been made of Paul Thomas Anderson's documentary about the recording of Junun, the boundary-bending new album from Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express, that the music itself has been somewhat forgotten, as though it were an accessory to the film rather than the other way around. That's a shame, because Junun is a joyful, vibrant record which blends disparate musical styles with results that are by turns boisterous, intimate and, at best, transcendent.
One look at Junun's contributors reveals just how diverse and unusual a project this is. Top billing goes to the Israeli musician Shye Ben Tzur, who is joined by Radiohead guitarist Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express, a hand-picked ensemble of 19 Rajasthani musicians from three disparate musical traditions: qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music associated with frenzied states of religious ecstasy; traditional Manganiar court music; and the unique form of brass music which developed in India when instruments were left behind by British army bands. When this motley gang assembled to record the album, they did so in an appropriately barmy environment: the 15th century Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, on the fringes of the Thar Desert.
It's apt for such a genre-straddling record that Junun's songs, written by Ben Tzur, are multilingual -Hebrew, Hindi and Urdu renderings of Sufi religious poetry. The trance-inducing properties of qawwali are immediately evident from the frenetic percussion which opens the title track, before it unfolds into a riotous affair of brass, harmonium and stop-start bass, the latter courtesy of Greenwood, the record's most famous contributor.
Continue reading: Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood And The Rajasthan Express - Junun Album Review
Jonny Greenwood performing with Radiohead in Manchester
