Dudu Tassa and Jonny Greenwood announce debut album ‘Jarak Qaribak’
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has announced his debut collaborative album with the Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, Jarak Qaribak. The LP is set to be released on June 9th via World Circuit Records.
The project has been co-produced by the two musicians, and mixed by longtime Radiohead producer, Nigel Godrich. For the album, they’ve teamed up with a series of vocalists from the Middle East including Lebanese singer Rashid al-Najjar who guests on Jarak Qaribak‘s lead single ‘Ashufak Shay’, which is out now.
“When people listen to this music,” Tassa said in a statement about the album. “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?” On Greenwood’s musical capabilities, he adds: “It’s everything I can’t do, and don’t know how to do.”
According to Greenwood, the record is their attempt of “trying to imagine what Kraftwerk would have done if they’d been in Cairo in the 1970s”. The Radiohead musician, who married into an Israeli family, also doesn’t want the album to be perceived as making a “political point”. He explains: “We didn’t want to make out that we’re making any political point, but I do understand that as soon as you do anything in that part of the world it becomes political, even if it’s just artistic. Actually, possibly especially if it’s artistic.”
Tassa commented: “Israel is a small country between all those countries, so we’re very influenced by those cultures and by that music. And a lot of us in Israel – like my family – are descended from people who came here from elsewhere in the Middle East, so everything gets mixed up.”
Listen to ‘Ashufak Shay’ below.
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