Jonny Greenwood on new Junun album: “We pretended we were playing with James Brown and Miles Davis”

Jonny Greenwood has discussed the making of Junun, the new album he’s created in collaboration with Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express, speaking in the new issue of Uncut, out now.

The Radiohead guitarist travelled to the Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur to record with the collective, in sessions documented by director Paul Thomas Anderson. The musical and visual results are out now.

“My role was overseeing production,” explains Greenwood. “Basically to sit in with the drummers and pretend we were accompanying James Brown and Miles Davis. What I didn’t want was an overly reverential ‘field’ recording of – terrible name – ‘world music’. We were making a record.

“We were using every last piece of equipment we had – we brought everything from the Radiohead studio. These limitations were good for us: Nigel [Godrich] and Sam constructed an echo chamber in a basement of the fort, so it felt like the whole building became part of the record.”

The new issue of Uncut, dated January 2016, is out now.

The January 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Paul Weller, David Bowie, Best Of 2015, Roger Waters, Father John Misty, Pere Ubu, Robert Forster, Natalie Prass, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Sunn O))), Jonny Greenwood, Arthur Lee & Love, Neil Young, Janis Joplin and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.