Radiohead‘s Jonny Greenwood has announced a new album with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa.
‘Jarak Qaribak’ will come out on June 9 and is being previewed by a first single titled ‘Ashufak Shay’.
Discussing the style of the music on the album in a press release, Tassa – who has previously toured with Radiohead – said: “When people listen to this music, I really love to imagine them thinking…what is this? It sounds 1970s, but there are drum machines, there are guitars but they’re singing in Arabic…what’s going on?”
Greenwood discussed how the project compared to another past collaboration with an Israeli singer, Shye Ben Tzur, saying: “‘Jarak Qaribak’ presented a similar set of problems, in that you have all these scales which don’t conform to western major/minor scales, and have notes which involve quarter-tones, and it’s very hard to impose a chord sequence on these melodies. It usually makes them collapse. It’s like reducing the resolution on a colour photo until it’s just squares.”
Listen to ‘Ashufak Shay’ below alongside watching an album teaser.
1. ‘Djit Nishrab’ (feat. Ahmed Doma)
2. ‘Ashufak Shay’ (feat. Rashid Al Najjar)
3. ‘Taq ou-Dub’ (feat. Nour Freteikh)
4. ‘Leylet Hub’ (feat. Mohssine Salaheddine)
5. ‘Ya Mughir al-Ghazala’ (feat. Karrar Alsaadi)
6. ‘Ahibak’ (feat. Safae Essafi)
7. ‘Ya ‘Anid Ya Yaba’ (feat. Lynn A.)
8. ‘Lhla Yzid Ikthar’
More music looks set to be on the horizon for Greenwood, with both of his main projects hinting at future new material in recent weeks.
This month, Radiohead drummer Philip Selway has said that the band will release new material “of some sort” in the “next couple of years”, while The Smile – the band of Greenwood, Thom Yorke and Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner – have been working on new music for the last seven weeks and looking to follow up 2022 debut ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’.
Away from music, Greenwood has started selling his own olive oil, made on his own farm in the Le Marche region of Italy.