One Battle After Another (Ost) (2 LP)

Nonesuch releases Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated composer Jonny Greenwood’s score to the new action comedy film written, directed, and produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another. The album features eighteen new compositions performed by Greenwood - on piano, guitar, bass, percussion, and Ondes Martenot - joined by the London Contemporary Orchestra and conductor Hugh Brunt, among others.

Released via Warner Bros. Pictures in the UK on September 26, One Battle After Another stars Academy Award and BAFTA winners Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro, and Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti. In the film, washed-up revolutionary Bob (DiCaprio) exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited, self-reliant daughter, Willa (Infiniti). When his evil nemesis (Penn) resurfaces after sixteen years and she goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her, father and daughter both battling the consequences of his past.

Anderson directs from his own screenplay. The producers are Oscar and BAFTA nominees Adam Somner and Sara Murphy and Anderson, with Will Weiske executive producing. In addition to Greenwood, the creative team behind the camera includes several other frequent collaborators, among them director of photography Michael Bauman; Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winning production designer Florencia Martin; BAFTA-nominated editor Andy Jurgensen; Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood; and casting director Cassandra Kulukundis.

One Battle After Another is Greenwood’s sixth Nonesuch-released Paul Thomas Anderson film score. Previous recordings include soundtracks to Phantom Thread, Junun, Inherent Vice, The Master, and There Will Be Blood. Nonesuch also released his collaboration with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima / Popcorn Superhet Receiver / Polymorphia / 48 Responses to Polymorphia, his score to Tran Anh Hung’s film Norwegian Wood, and his performance of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint.

Indiewire says of Anderson and Greenwood’s collaboration: “Paul Thomas Anderson fans are well accustomed to how instrumental Jonny Greenwood’s music is to the auteur’s body of work. Whether it’s the foreboding strings in There Will Be Blood or the discordant percussion in The Master, Greenwood’s original scores expertly capture Anderson’s tones.”

Jonny Greenwood is best known for being the lead guitarist and multi-instrumentalist in the band Radiohead and more recently in The Smile. Radiohead have had phenomenal critical acclaim and huge popularity throughout their thirty-year career, earning multi-platinum record sales along the way, and the signs are that The Smile too are destined for great success. But Greenwood's musical passions extend far beyond “rock” music. He has an extensive back catalogue of classical pieces, film soundtracks, and traditional middle eastern folk music.

Greenwood has always had a deep love for classical music. He has always held a fascination for Messiaen and Ligeti, for instance, and his first foray into music was as a young viola player, soon leading to him mastering piano, recorder, harmonica, and the ondes Martenot. He has penned a number of classical pieces including; smear, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, Doghouse, 48 Responses to Polymorphia, Water, and Horror vacui (Ivors Composer Award-winner for Large Scale Composition).

Sections of Popcorn Superhet Receiver were reworked for the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood (2007). Greenwood won Best Film Score at the Evening Standard British Film Awards, and Critics’ Choice Award for Best Composer by the Broadcast Film Critics Association of the USA, both in 2007. Other film scores composed by Greenwood include Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung, 2010); We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynn Ramsey, 2011); The Master, Inherent Vice, and Phantom Thread (all Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012, 2014, 2017 respectively); and The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion 2021). He and Anderson also collaborated on the 2015 album and film Junun along with Shye Ben Tzur and the Indian ensemble Rajasthan Express. Greenwood's most recent work, Jarak Qaribak (2023) is an exploration of traditional Arabic folk music working with musicians spanning the Middle East.