John Zorn: Classic or Dud?

Uri Caine: Moloch: Book of Angels Volume 6

I've been playing the Koby Israelite (Orobas) again lately. I agree about the awesomeness of the accordion. Lots of great solos on the record. I can see what you mean about the rhythms being somewhat unsatisfying - to me, they don't seem to "groove" quite as much as they should - they seem a bit stiff. Maybe that's what you mean by the "proggy wedding band groove" (great phrase, by the way). I guess that's because the focus is more on having lots of different sections with different tempos and having surprising sudden transitions, so it's harder sometimes to let the groove develop organically. So there's a trade-off going on, but I can see value in both approaches. It's interesting that you found the drumming less interesting than the other instruments, considering that Koby has for most of his career been primarily a drummer, and he only recently picked up the accordion. I guess he picked it up pretty fast.

There's an interesting interview with Koby here:

http://www.adequacy.net/interview.php?InterviewID=69

I've been listening to last year's Malphas, performed by Mark Feldman and Sylvie Courvoisier, a great deal this summer. It's lovely, quite energetic, with memorable, unpredictable melodies and tight interplay. I sometimes wonder how much of the credit should go to Zorn and how much to the performers. AFAIK the scoring is quite open.

Also, I recently downloaded Astronome, performed by Patton/Baron/Dunn. It's very different but I liked it on first listen. Heavy noise-rock with vocables from Patton but somehow it seems to come together and be more listenable than some other things in that vein.

AFAIK the scoring is quite open

That's certainly the impression I get from the Koby interview:

DOA: The songs on Orobas are from Zorn's Masada series, which have been described as "improvisational starting points." In what form was the music delivered to you, and how much of it was already clearly defined? There are some killer solos on various instruments throughout the album. Would it be more accurate to say they were your improvisations or lines that were meticulously mapped out by Zorn ahead of time?

KI: Zorn sent me only the melodies/riffs in some tunes, and for some he sent me the chord changes (like in the song “Nisroc,” for example). The solos were improvised by myself or by the trumpet player Sid Gauld, recorder player Stewart Curtis, and bass player Yaron Stavi.

Mark Feldman is amazing on Ned Rothenberg's Inner Diaspora. He's playing a little less outside there, but there's plenty going on. The whole album is terrific (not that it has much to do with Zorn, aside from being on his label).

Yeah, you keep mentioning that one.;) I'm sure I'll like it but I haven't got around to hearing it yet.

BTW that's noise-rock in a proggy, choppy kind of way, not in a droney way.

Yeah, you keep mentioning that one.;)

Even though I have hardly heard anything new this year, I have to have something to hype.

Classic, but that Mike Patton connection makes me want to call him a dud.

why

DID NOT DESERVER 500,000 PTS!!!

MOST OF J Z'S SHIT SOUNDS LIKE ADULT THEMES FOR VOICES. TWO THUMBS DOWN.

dud. his voice on his horns is empty and faceless, and along with ken vandermark he's essentially this music's equivalent of the blues brothers: always paying tribute at the expense of developing even a halfway distinctive approach.

Naked City, Kristallnacht & Cobra live performances are pretty classic. Shots of a duo w/Eye I took in the 90's @ the Knitting Factory:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1238/1034906278_ff38e3f7bb.jpg

Christmas album!

The biggest surprise of the year is John Zorn’s beautiful Christmas album. Zorn has hand picked seven of his favorite Christmas songs, penned two lovely originals and they are performed here in classic Dreamers style with plenty of exciting solos, exotic colors and catchy lyricism. Filled with a joyful holiday spirit, innocence, a touch of nostalgia and a charming lyricism, this is music for all ages that will make you smile with delight from the very first notes. As a special treat, vocalist Mike Patton delivers an intimate and heartfelt rendition of Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, making A Dreamers Christmas an instant classic, and an essential album for any contemporary Christmas celebration.

Can't wait for this.

Me too. I love the Dreamers stuff

John Zorn is one of the first/formative favorite artists of mine who nonetheless made me, at a certain point, just say 'enough.' So much of his stuff was so well packaged, played (by some of my favorite players) and recorded, and so much was expensive even by domestic standards, let alone as imports, that years ago I just had to give up trying to keep up. I haven't heard anything - let alone thought of - Zorn for longer than I can remember, though I have held on to some of my favorite stuff: Masada, Naked City, the soundtrack series, Big Gundown. Bar Kokhba and The Circle Maker.

(Ha, looking upthread, I think the last time Zorn came to mind was the last time I posted on this thread, five years ago!

I just got the first four Masada discs (three full-length CDs and a three-song EP). Listened to part of the first one this morning. It was good, but not life-changing or anything, and I didn't hear a huge amount of Ornette (except on the very first track) or anything ultra-Jewish in a shove-it-in-your-face sort of way. Most of it was just adventurous-ish hard bop. I guess I'll make my way through all of it (35 tracks) just 'cause it's there, but honestly my enthusiasm is already fading and I've only listened to about eight pieces.

I dunno, I think adventurous-ish hard bop is good enough. I suppose it does get interesting what be does with the various Masada themes in future projects/groups.

This Christmas album is well lounge-y...Not sure what I expected but we're clearly in the world of Christmas Cookin'/Ski Surfin'/Charlie Brown rather than Jazz Freakout Christmas.

I had a real Zorn-athon today. Listened to The Dreamers albums and then took in Mount Analogue for the first time. I bought my first Zorn Album 'Spillane' when I was 15 years old and 24 years later I still feel like I am a newbie. It was a split South Bank Show with Zorn/Sonic Youth that got my attention. Whenever I get bored of everything on my ipod I just delete it all and stick a load of Zorn/Mingus/Miles/Mozart on it.Every time I go back to Zorn there is always one of his albums that I previously didn't care much for, suddenly becomes my favourite album. The guy's music is an extraordinary goldmine. Now I am listening to Nova Express which is becoming another of my favourites.

Dreamers is his sort of post-Masada outfit, right? Sort of like another iteration of Electric Masada? I've heard their Book 2 disc is great.

Just check out The Gift, The Dreamers,Alhambra Love Songs and o'o and I guarantee you will find a lot to love. I am not great with his personel but I they all have Ribot on guitar and members of Electric Masada.

Electric Masada is a better band than Radiohead

I will be careful about getting too excited on here in future, lest I get cut again by laconic wit.

Sorry about my last nonsense post I have had a few today and am not sure what I was talking about.

Went to an excellent concert performance last night by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra of some of Zorn's orchestral pieces. Just great to hear a huge group of musicians really nailing some typically 'difficult' (to execute, at least) pieces. Can be heard here;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ppw1t

Try to check a couple - wish he'd play Chimeras live (its a for Pierrot Lunaire type ensemble, and it works)

There's this next month for Londoners.

I really like the extremely short-lived band Zorn had with Fred Frith on guitar, Bill Laswell on bass, and Dave Lombardo on drums. They only played four shows ever between 1999 and 2001, and recorded exactly one studio track, on the Taboo and Exile album (two other tracks on that disc feature Frith, Laswell, Lombardo, and Marc Ribot, but no Zorn). I have bootlegs of all four live shows, and they're pretty killer. A kind of cross between Pain Killer and Last Exit, with Lombardo erupting into double kick drum madness at regular intervals. Frith gets drowned out a lot. Oh, and at the New York show (which I was at), Eye joins on vocals for part of it.

Really? I saw their London performance and didn't think it worked at all - seemed like four different musicians doing their own thing rather any kind of collective endeavour. This may be conditioned by the fact that a) I'd seen a Masada evening at the same venue about a year before, which was one of the best gigs I've been to, and b) I find the sound of Laswell's electric 12-string particularly unlovable. Still, Lombardo was amazing, and we did get Derek Bailey in support.

I got to see a Naked City show in NYC back in the day at the old Marquee. The guy in the wrestling mask doing the vocals turned out to be, not Eye, but Mike Patton. It was one of the most fun shows I ever attended, seeing these four musicians with sheet music siting down looking totally serious whilst performing some of the most fucked up and precise noise ever invented.

So that's classic.

But the dude is incredibly prolific and only a small portion of it is even close to as interesting as that, so I understand if people disagree.

Another fond Naked City memory: I worked at the Tower Records in the Village from 1989-1990 downstairs in the cassettes department. Sometimes I would be asked to work in the separate room down there at the back where we kept soundtracks, jazz, world music and the like, sequestered from the more mainstream stuff. While working in there one was not allowed to play anything not for sale in there. So I always played Naked City (and also soundtracks for the first Decline of Western Civilization and River's Edge). Which pissed my bosses off and scared quite a few customers but I am also pretty sure I sold a few tapes too!

A 4+ hour Masada marathon this week in NY for his 60th, featuring 13 different iterations. There's a recording just gone up on D1m3 too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/arts/music/john-zorn-gets-a-masada-marathon-for-his-60th-birthday.html?_r=0

Wow.

Did you hear his NPR interview? Totally not what I expected - funny, talkative, self-deprecating, cooperative, etc. ...

I was there http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

Josh - will check that out, I've been a bit of a grump wrt Zorn in recent years but feel that I'm coming back around again, the London birthday concert a couple of months ago was fantastic.

WGW - was it all good? I'd like to have seen SC3 doing Masada

It was pretty phenomenal

It was supposed to be 3.5 hours, so the nearly FIVE HOUR performance did, in fact, feel like a marathon, complete with exhaustion

Obviously, for me, the rockcentric stuff was the best — Secret Chiefs 3, Abraxas, Krakower, and Electric Masada who might be the best working American rock band — especially since it was so monstrously loud in that room. Watching/hearing older folks cover their ears and complain to each other was a rare treat you usually only get to see on sitcoms, so it had that extra element. On the other end of the spectrum, it was the second time I've seen Feldman/Courvosier duo and I really love the kind of broken chamber music feel that Pareles pointed out. (Their Masada CD is really good too) Zorn didn't actually play until the very last band, so hearing his familiar sax sound after however many hours was like a jolt of electricity.

I'm pulling it in now, if anybody wants a W3Transf3r link PM me.

I bought the Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz: Abraxas Book of Angels 19 after seeing em at Masada Marathon and it is blazing

http://www.spin.com/articles/john-zorn-mike-patton-met-museum-of-art/

The whole day at the Met Museum from open to close... in 77 seconds:
http://www.spin.com/articles/john-zorn-mike-patton-met-museum-of-art/

I lost track of the Filmworks series several volumes in, but wow, is this perfectly Komeda-meets-Morricone-a-rific:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYOS-tx0vHE

this 'in lambeth' william blake tribute is fantastic. reminds me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9zLcHSilHY

How many Zorn CDs does an ilxor have in their house?

i only ever physically owned naked city

I "physically" own naked city and masada live in sevilla

50 on the dot, incl. 6 multi-disc sets, incl. the Parachute Years box

But none in the last 8-9 years

I have all 7 CDs by the Moonchild band, and the 4CD Painkiller anthology. That's it.

I used to have a dozen cassettes, then dozens of Tzadik and Avant and Elektra CDs. Masada and Naked City were a huge hunk. And Film series. Now all is digital.

Kristallnacht
Bar Kohkba
The Circle Maker
Naked City
Astronome
Six Litanies for Heliogabalus
Chimeras

I think that's all I have. Not sure where else to go with him. The Bar Kohkba discs are easily my favourites.

I've been in a 'listening project' mode lately (Art Blakey, Wu-Tang), but this is overwhelming to contemplate.

My unemployment is doing corrosive damage to my Zorn fandom

So far it's really hard to search on Spotify, which makes it hard to tell what's there or not. Still not sure Naked City or OG Masada is up, but lots of Masada related stuff is. Live albums, New Masada stuff, other collections. I believe all of Film Works is up, obviously tons of other stuff, including countless records I've never heard because, yeah, there's a limit (practical, financial) to keeping up.

Just did a search on John Zorn and I see a lot more albums on his page today vs yesterday. Another option is to put this in the search box:

Label: "Tzadik"

Huh, that got me worse results. That is, none.

I do see "Big Gundown" now, so things are moving.

Obviously there are tons of albums and artists in this drop, maybe it's clogging up the works a bit. But another example, I get nothing if I search for "Painted Desert," and that's whether or not I search for Ikue Mori, Marc Ribot or Robert Quine. I assume it's all trickling in.

Some of the stuff that's not up on streamers yet has been put up on Youtube in the past day or so, with notes saying "Provided to Youtube by Redeye Worldwide," which is Tzadik's distributor. Seems like a good sign.

One bad thing is some artist misattribution, like some of the Book of Angels volumes only have JZ as the artist, and don't include the actual players. Like vol 1, Astaroth, only artist listed is JZ, but no Jamie Saft Trio.

I'm putting as much as I can in this playlist. It's a work in progress, so please don't send messages pointing out what I missed yet.

https://spotify.link/KV97uSnNsDb

We might need a separate thread for spelunking through the catalog

I think it's impossible lol. Whiney dedicated like a year of his life to it, and where did that get him? Behind!

xp definitely!

There is this — Tzadik: Search & Destroy — but a new thread seems like a good idea.

I'm happy to discuss here or elsewhere. I really need to devise a way to keep track of things I want to dig into more. Right now I'm just shuffling through masses of stuff, trying to remember the things that catch my attention, but there's just too much goodness.

Oh, I'm not trying to be a completist by any means, but there's certainly a lot in there that I've been intrigued by for years. I'm more than content dipping in and out.

I wonder what made him finally do it, and why they went straight to streaming without trying Bandcamp (or maybe that's still to come).

I really really hope they do Bandcamp as well, that's all I use

Ha, I like the "A Tzadik Classic!" label applied to some of these - https://www.tzadik.com/catalog.php?view=date

I also love that Julian Lage has been spending so much time in the Zorn-verse

Is Joey Baron no longer working regularly with Zorn?

I guess not? I listened to a nearly three hour podcast interview with him and it was insane to me that Zorn/Masada never came up.

Ok let's go https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=41

Oops - At the Mountains of Madness: Tzadik Records catalog now streaming

Speaking of the original Masada quartet, I see that Tzadik is coming out with a limited run box set of the 10 original quartet CDs, previously only available on DIW Japan. Pricey but tempting.

Oops, missed the fact that this was posted above. I was distracted by the streaming news.

Just watched this clip from 10 years ago, it rules:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4eO2o9u1j0