Uncut and Q give Jonny Greenwood's Bodysong three stars

Jonny Greenwood has asked that Bodysong not be compared or contrasted with Radiohead, and Uncut's unsigned review, giving the score three out of five on 1 December, says that request is all that stops it calling the record creepy and often impenetrable. Nobody will hum it, the review adds, but Radiohead fans will find something in it to worship. It is best heard with Simon Pummell's film, which opened in UK cinemas on 5 December, the way Philip Glass worked better with Koyaanisqatsi than without it.

Q give it three stars too. “Splitter” is jazz caving in on itself, “Convergence” little more than sticks hit hard, and “Clockwork Tin Soldiers” from another planet; the magazine sees no commercial future for the record, and plenty of invention and detail.

Philip Brasor, in The Japan Times of 7 December, writes that Bodysong stands up as a record, though Greenwood says it is not a solo album. Brasor picks out Arvo Pärt in the modes of the string quartet pieces, and free jazz Ornette Coleman would not be ashamed of, but the rhythm impresses him most. On “Convergence” a squad of percussion instruments play in different time signatures until mathematical chance brings them into unison.

Andy Lee of ChartAttack credits Greenwood with much of Radiohead's move away from the guitars of OK Computer; the score goes further still, with clicks, throbbing bass, glockenspiel, jazz trumpet and a mournful violin drifting in and out. Lee calls it mesmerising, and good company for a long evening with a bottle of Japanese whisky.