Jonny Greenwood is The Controller

Whether you recognise him as Radiohead's soaring lead guitarist, a recent winner at the BBC British Composer Awards or even as a member of the Weird Sisters featured in the Harry Potter films, none can dispute Jonny Greenwood's legendary musical credentials.

Here he turns his hand to compiling an album of music that is extremely close to his heart, Reggae music. Jonny trawled the archives of the legendary Trojan Records and has picked a faultless selection of tracks by the likes of Linval Thompson, John Holt, Lee Perry and The Heptones ranging from classic Ska and Rocksteady cuts to some vintage Dub and Roots.

Why? We'll let the great man himself explain: "How could all this remarkable music come from one small island, with a population less than 2 million in the 1970's? Over a period of about twenty years, there was a remarkable explosion of Jamaican talent: the songwriting, the playing, the recording techniques; all these emerging arts came together to create some of the most important recordings of the last century. I don't think it's fanciful to compare, for example, Lee 'Scratch' Perry's work with the Beatles experimental music, or even composers like Stockhausen. Listen to his 'Black Panta'. It's all acoustic instruments, voices and microphones, and yet the resulting music is far beyond a 'faithful' reproduction of a band playing. The studio had become an instrument in itself, and producers like Perry took this development to it's most glorious extreme, pushing echoes beyond recognition, kicking reverb springs to create ghostly rattles (listen to Johnny Clarke's "A Ruffer Version" produced at King Tubby's) and so started a revolution in recording."
- Jonny Greenwood