Shye Ben Tzur, Johnny Greenwood and The Rajasthan Express

Shye Ben Tzur, Johnny Greenwood and The Rajasthan Express

“Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere - everything is coming together, for better or worse, and we can no longer pretend we're all living in different worlds because we're on different continents.”

Philip Glass

By: Ghost Writer

We all know that the Radiohead guys are music lovers way before musicians, and that their musical to tastes is something to pay attention, we have heard about Thom Yorke, the band singer, fascination with jazz, electronica and afro beat, and there is also guitarist Johnny Greenwood love for more contemporary classical composers like Penderecki, Messiaen, dub music and world beat.

Although we can hear some of these diverse influences on Radiohead music, filtered in a very special way, some free jazz, krautrock and electronica permeates in their records, you have to listen to Yorke's solo records to find more prominent elements of Thom's love for Tuareg blues, and as for Johnny, we get to obviously listen to his wild musical tastes in his soundtracks and collaborations with other musicians.

This time is Greenwood collaboration with Israeli musician Shye Ben Tzur, a curious product of globalization himself, as an Israeli musician, Ben Tzur got involved in Hindu music, specifically talking about the genre known as Qawwali a sort of devotional music that Shye uses as an instrument to mix all his Hebrew heritage along with the group known as The Rajasthan Express, an awesome bunch of musicians with an amazing expertise when it comes to middle east, oriental music made with plenty of percussions and brass.

Junun put us right into the world of India's music, where you can fell the powerful performance of the RE, Ben Tzur inspired vocals and Greenwood production wise input (along Radiohead's house producer Nigel Godrich), making this record one of the most exciting music coming from that part of the world and featuring western avant garde musician, Ornette Coleman and Brian Jones playing with The Master Musicians of Jajouka immediately come to mind.

For those not familiar with this type of music, I might say that in a way, it kind of reminds me of two things, Fela Kuti's intense afro beat and Goran Bregovic dazzling sountrack for Emir Kusturica wonderful Underground, the comparison might not be to adequate, but if you enjoy both type of stuff, you will surely love this record, just a few seconds of the title track and you will be completely mesmerized by its expensive brass section, and relentless percussion, and at to that Ben Tzur inspired vocals and you have a sure winner, other themes like Roked are really quirk and give more emphasis to a atmosphere and to Ben Tzur mystical chants.

There are other awesome moments, like the powerful resounding chanting on Eloah, the bone braking drum work and epic brass arrangements of Julus, which get close to pure abrasion at times, or Greenwood's guitar magic on Modeh, Junun is a great record, it could have been a powerful single recording, perhaps making it double rested some of the original power, but when it aims high is a complete juggernaut, Greenwood and Ben Tzur are here a true force of nature.