Yoko Ono and... review

To celebrate her 82nd birthday, Yoko Ono has released two collaborative tracks, one with Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnson's, and John Zorn, prolific avant-garde composer.

I'm quite the Yoko Ono fan. I think she's a brilliant conceptualist with a brilliant energy and that makes up for more than her lack of musicality.

I think she's at her most interesting when she is paired with excellent musicians, that way her avant-garde actions are tempered with a strength of sound. That's why that Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band album was so fantastic.

I don't think she could have chosen better co-conspirators for these collaborations. Antony Hegarty is an art-pop genius with a crystaline voice and Zorn bleeds the New York school of avant-garde with nearly every note, the scene that Yoko herself helped develop.

Her collaboration with Zorn is one, three-minute track containing Yoko's primal-screaming and Zorn's honking, skrnoking, screaming Kaoru Abe-esque saxaphone. The audio is taken from a 2012 live show at the Greene Space.

The Ono/Hegarty collaboration is two tracks. One is a duet of Ono's 1985 track "I Love You Earth," while the other is Antony's solo rendition of Ono's "I'm Going Away Smiling."

Their rendition of "I Love you Earth" is a starkly beautiful, wistful piece. Antony plays a booming, opulent piano lead while trading off verses with Yoko. The lyrics are particularly beautiful, describing a person so in love with Earth and infinity that they "have to scream about it."

"I'm Going Away Smiling" sounds like an epitaph and, with Yoko's advancing age, it very well might be. Antony plays a stark, cinematic piano part. It's very, very emotional stuff. A perfect tribute for Yoko and her life and accomplishments.



I'm hoping that isn't true, because, love her or despise her, Yoko Ono is a beacon for women in the avant-garde and I don't think the world would be the same without her.

Jonny Greenwood

Jonny Greenwood is a person gifted with the ability to hit something very hard and to come out with understated, fragile results.

I think that's every artist's dream, to swing a big bag of emotions at the very brittle wood of an artistic medium and make something more than splinters.

These are my  favorite things that he has been involved in. Only one Radiohead record will be on the list. They are presented in no particular order of enjoyment

5. Popcorn Superhet Receiver 

This track, written for the BBC Concert Orchestra, sounds like if La Monte Young was given access to synthesizers during his drone phase and possessed an in depth knowledge of Stravinsky and Disney music.

4. Bodysong score

Greenwood wrote the score for a 2003 documentary about the human condition in film. Just like the films topic, the music is heavy stuff. Surprisingly intense art-rock inflected with ethiopian music and jazz. He really tries to capture as much of the music of the world as he can in the small amount of time while still effectively maintaining musical craft.



3. 48 Responses To Polymorphia

This is a collaborative work with legendary composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Early chords are so, so Radiohead, but eventually the piece moves towards Polish classical territory.




2. Kid A

Strobe Lights and Blown Speakers

Fireworks and Hurricanes






1. There Will Be Blood Score

There Will Be Blood is a work of genius, a haunting tale filled with moral tension and stark beauty. The soundtrack reflects this with amazing passion and accuracy and with it Greenwood stepped into his own as a composer. This soundtrack is just beautifully finished. It feels rounded, whole, somehow perfect.