Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and The Rajasthan Express: Junun - Album Review

Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is no stranger to musical odyssey, having composed the soundtracks to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, The Master and Inherent Vice.

Junun is the product of Greenwood's recent collaboration with Israeli composer and musician Shye Ben Tzur and the Rajasthan Express, a group of Indian qawwali (Sufi devotional) musicians.

At the core of this double CD is an hypnotic and meditative ensemble that manages to sound utterly exotic and yet somehow familiar.

The qawwali singers are intensely focused and disciplined, at one with the rhythmic backbone of each song.

The richly evocative individual vocals meshed with the choral whole is what lures the listener ever inwards into this celebratory swirl of devotion.

[ nonesuch.com ]