Radiohead‘s frenetic rush of activity continues apace next month. Not content with the discbox version of “In Rainbows” arriving anyday, the USB stick of their back catalogue, and the formal shop release of “In Rainbows” on New Year’s Eve, Jonny Greenwood is sneaking out his second solo album, too.
Like its predecessor “Bodysongs”, “There Will Be Blood” is a soundtrack movie, in this case the score to the latest movie by “Magnolia” director Paul Thomas Anderson.
“There Will Be Blood” is released on December 17 on the Nonesuch label. It’s an instrumental score, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra led by Robert Ziegler, the Emperor Quartet, Caroline Dale (cello), and Michael Dussek (piano).
According to the record label, it doesn’t sound much like Radiohead. “Greenwood’s score is indicative of his current collaborations with the BBC Concert Orchestra as composer-in-residence, rather than his rock compositions,” reads the press release.
“The score incorporates material from an earlier orchestral piece he created in that position, ‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver’, which will have its US concert premiere in January when Greenwood appears as part of the Wordless Music Series in New York City. ”
“I saw some fairly long sections of the film, read the script, and just wrote loads of music,” explains Greenwood. “I tried to write to the scenery, and the story rather than specific ‘themes’ for characters. It’s not really the kind of narrative that would suit that. It was all about the underlying menace in the film, the greed, and that against the fucked-up, oppressive religious mood – and this kid in the middle of it all.”
Anderson’s film, adapted from the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! and starring Daniel Day Lewis, will be released in the UK by Disney on February 8, 2008.