50TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION VOLUME 4: ELECTRIC MASADA

4.5 stars. John Zorn knows how to celebrate a birthday! For his 50th, in 2003, Zorn spent the month of September in New York City hanging out with a lot of musicians. And by hanging out, I mean playing live music together. There are twelve of these such live releases, celebrating John's 50th, or 12 volumes if you will, with the uniform cover art. This is some powerful music right here folks. I do prefer "At The Mountains Of Madness" that was released a year after this one, and it features most of the music on here, but better in my opinion. The closer which is my least favourite song on here isn't included on "At The Mountains Of Madness". A 5 star release I hope to review in a month or so.

ELECTRIC MASADA are an eight piece here, with two drummers and a percussionist. Add an electronic guru, guitar, sax, bass and keyboards. Six of these guys are in a band called THE DREAMING, with several also in BAR KOKHBA. Dunn the bass player is from MR. BUNGLE, SECRET CHIEFS 3 and more. So much talent on display here, and the way they seem to jam and improv reminds me of Miles Davis and his all-star lineups. The music here though is avant, free jazz, klezmer and metal. That last track is too laid back in my opinion to be the closer, it's still a good one with the guitar and sax leading the way, but it pales when compared to the other six tracks.

This is a long one at over 72 minutes. But those first two tracks kill. We have the 14 1/2 minute opener where the electric piano leads around 6 minutes in, my favourite section. But again the sax and guitar are great. The second track is more about the guitar early on but the sax is all over this too. The least melodic song would be "Hath-Arob" but it's also the shortest. Love the atmosphere and mellow sections on "Yatzar". Lots of intricate sounds, a headphone track for sure.

Zorn at times sounds like Pharoah Sanders, the way he wails. And I'm surprised at how upfront the guitar is. Such an amazing album though that can be quite trippy, but there's a lot of power on display here as well.