Outstanding 10 interview with composer Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. He is such a gift to cinematic soundtracks ever since A++++ of There Will Be Blood and The Master.

His work this year on Spencer is a home run. I still think about that masterpiece almost daily. I started The Power Of The Dog last night but had to stop because the internet went out. I actually might start it over to pay more attention to the sounds now that I have read this. I am only about a quarter in and I can tell it is a slow build to something powerful I haven’t reached yet…the portion I have seen is slooow yet quality made. Looking forward to the finish.

This made me laugh:

“The Power of the Dog” is just astounding. What were some of those early exchanges with Jane Campion about?

She’s someone who, if she takes you on, assumes you know what you’re doing. She’ll be supportive and enthusiastic, but not prescriptive. Which was good and bad. The bad side was that she’d agree to me trying ideas which were stupid. Like, I said, um, listen, there’s lots of banjo in this film, as you know. Why can’t banjo be part of contemporary classical music? What’s stopping it? I could only find some George Crumb stuff that had banjo scored for it. So I tried writing for string quartet and banjo—which you might not be surprised to learn was terrible.

Sort of atonal banjo?

Ugh! I mean, the worst comical sorts of sounds. That was a big dead end. But it led me to playing the cello like a banjo instead. Because I played cello a little bit, with the aid of lots of Sellotape to mark where the frets should be, if it was a guitar, and I just learned to play banjo rhythms on the cello.