Jonny Greenwood - “Roked” (Official Video)

Jonny Greenwood - “Roked” Video (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Earlier this year, we learned that Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood had gone to India to work on a new album with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and with the Rajasthan Express, a qawwali group from northwest India. The great director Paul Thomas Anderson went with them to film a documentary about the process, and he and Greenwood have a tight bond, as Greenwood contributed amazing scores to the last three Anderson movies. Today, Pitchfork reports that Greenwood’s solo album is called Junun and that it’ll be out next month.

Anderson’s documentary is also called Junun, and you can watch it right now at the streaming service Mubi. (I’ve never previously heard of Mubi, which costs $5 a month. But the movie will be up there exclusively for the next month, and $5 for a new PTA movie seems like a pretty good deal.) A trailer for the movie turns out to be a montage set to the trancelike new track “Roked,” and Anderson films the Rajasthan Express musicians recording and traveling through the city of Jodhpur. More than any other working director, Anderson has a gift for finding memorable images, and that comes through even in documentary footage.