Jonny Greenwood on Boiler Room

Jonny Greenwood is starstruck by Krzysztof Penderecki, and tells the online music channel Boiler Room, at a rehearsal for a concert that includes Greenwood's own pieces, that the composer looks just as one should, bearded, slightly overweight and with a childlike twinkle in his eyes. What draws Greenwood is that Penderecki learned all there was to know about electronics in the 1960s, then took white noise and the rest to an orchestra, sure the sounds would be more interesting there. Greenwood tries to do the same with laptop effects.

The room is another instrument, he says, and it changes which pieces he and the players choose to play. Hearing others play his music is awkward, and “everything sounds about half an hour longer than it really is”. It is like sitting through an awkward play he wrote, with the actors making the dialogue. But simple ideas on paper that come to life fire him up, and he finds it strange “that you can put music into an envelope and post it to somebody” and have it reproduced, much better. Trying stupid ideas out with the players has spawned pieces, and filled waste paper bins. After so much music that sounds the same every time a button is pressed, he likes that nothing here is reliable except how people play.