SIX LITANIES FOR HELIOGABALUS

Moonlight Trio is one of the most current John Zorn's project, and even from participating musicians line-up you can expect this project isn't so pleasant and easy listening, as Masada or The Dreamers. Mark Patton on vocals, Trevor Dunn on bass and Joey Baron on drums don't sound as very safe team of musicians, and guests are all the same - radical electronics artist Ikue Mori and Zorn himself, playing hard core free jazz attacking sax, between others.

Album's music than is what you expected - uncontrolled genius' madness. Possibly last time John's music sounded similar on Naked City releases, but there it was mostly punkish avant hard core. There, played by Moonchild trio, the music is eclectic mix of free jazz, brutal rhythms (rare example when even zeuhl influences could be recognised in Zorn's music), radical avant noise, screaming vocals (or just screams), some soundtracks themes, downtown atmosphere - and all mixed in one very theatrical brew!

If you're in mellow well-structured pleasant and comfortable prog for burgers, better leave this album where it is. If you're not very tolerant in what you're listen, and think Bjork music is extremal and almost extremist, better run from this album away. Believe me, most radical Bjork's screams sound as Moon Safari (nowadays Take That) comparing with "Six Litanies...".

This music will wake you up, will push your blood to circulate faster and your brains to work harder. Great album for those who is ready to listen to it!

Well, think again. This gut-punching album from John Zorn's Moonchild Trio will completely ruin any associations the word might have shared with Peter Sinfield's benevolent hippie whimsy. The '07 effort marks only my third pit-stop along an unguided, arbitrary weeklong tour through a truly intimidating discography (numbering over 400 albums as a composer and/or collaborator), and it feels like my itinerary was hijacked at gunpoint by a raving maniac with a Mensa IQ.

Of course trying to pin down the music of John Zorn will always be like trying to capture lightning in a bottle: a futile exercise that usually results in shattered glass and third-degree burns. Especially when such an eclectic artist is indulging his more hardcore inclinations, and they don't get much harder (or eclectic) than this.

Here's the man himself, quoted on the back cover of the CD (the emphasis is his): "POWERFUL SECRETS are revealed through INTENSITY and EXTREMITIES of experience". Boy, was he ever not kidding. This project makes even the outer limits of The Mars Volta sound like The Moody Blues...

The original trio (bass guitar, drums and vocals) was expanded here to a sextet, with an additional three-voice female choir adding depth and nuance to a distorted soundstage (Zorn himself, wrestling a demented saxophone, is only a guest at his own party). And the music itself might be described as pyrotechnic modern-art thrash-metal, with the spark in the gunpowder provided by vocalist Mike Patton, a familiar name to fans of the similar but much tamer Avant-Prog Metal ensemble MR. BUNGLE. Listen in amazement while he snorts, gags, coughs up a lungful of bloody phlegm, screams, gasps for breath, and at one point hawks his throat and expectorates all over the studio microphone.

It's an astonishing performance, but don't call it singing. Patton begins at a point where even Damo Suzuki might have hesitated ("Peking O", anyone?), and then leaps headlong into an exhilarating performance-art freefall. If your tolerance for unhinged guttural gymnastics is limited (and no one would blame you, if so), be advised to skip "Litany IV" altogether, which is entirely Patton, unaccompanied for eight alarming minutes and sounding not unlike the old Loony Tunes Tasmanian Devil in the middle of an existential crisis.

A few islands of relative sanity can be found within the roiling oceans of chaos: a groovy Neo-Krautrock organ jam in "Litany II" (shades of ELECTRIC ORANGE), and several interludes of ghostly pagan atmospherics, not inappropriate for an album named after a decadent 3rd century Roman Emperor. And a musicologist might be able to further dissect the mayhem with a clean intellectual scalpel. But doing so would kill the patient, and miss half the fun. The album isn't a thesis project: it's a musical judo exhibition, and that grey area between your ears is the block of wood waiting to be split in two by a well-timed kick.

This is what I consider the best of the Moonchild Trio albums; "Six Litanies for Heliogabalus". These six kaleidoscopic tracks make up some of the most dynamic music out there, ranging from frantic bits of screaming and loud chaos to soft and almost sensual passages within each track. The thing that makes this one the best of the projects in their discography is that it is the most dynamic and variant of all of them.

You probably already know that Mike Patton can do amazing things with his voice and that there simply is no match for his vocalizations, same as you know that he and Trevor Dunn worked together in Mr. Bungle, and that Dunn's bass is some of the most amazing bass put on record anywhere, and that is proven here on this album over and over again. But Joey Baron, who has worked in another project called Electric Masada also along with Dunn is probably the least known of the three, but with his crazy drumming skills, he should be on a level with the other two.

Besides those three, on this album, Zorn plays the sax like a madman, and at times even can make you think they have captured a frantic squealing pig, that Patton is trying to mimic that pig as they torture it with an onslaught of pounding bass, and, of course, the excellent swashes of organ by Jamie Saft and further electronics of Ikue Mori. Add three other vocalists (Martha Cluver, Abby Fishcer, and Kirsten Soller) that come in with choir parts and other sounds, and you have the best and most concise of the Moonchild Trio albums.

Yes there are plenty of outbursts of mayhem and chaos, as you would expect, but in this case, there are also plenty of contrasts to that too. The harmonies done by the 3 other singers give you a feeling of peace and tranquility, yet underlying their sound is a feeling of unease, and when Zorn adds his sax to the choir with the twinkling of dissonant electronics and Patton's heavy breathing, (I'm talking about "Litany Pt. 3" specifically here), the unease just can't be denied. But get ready, Patton is about to let out the most hair-raising scream you've probably ever heard, and then the music melts into a heavy rock cavalcade of organ, wild bass and frantic drums in an amazing instrumental showcase. This is just an example of what to expect here, the most unpredictable music most people will ever hear, and most of them probably won't tolerate it.

The question is, are you prepared for this? I'll tell you now, you have never heard anyone scat like Patton does at the beginning of Pt. 4. The man is crazy. It you are curious and ready for anything, this is the album to hear out of all of their albums. Easily their best as a trio, and one of the best of any output by any of them. Notice I say one of the best as each one of them have had some amazing albums. Just know that this is avant-garde craziness. You'll laugh, cry, and run away in a panic at Patton's antics, but the fact that everyone else involved is just as amazing will either make your head explode or your speakers melt, and now we've come around full circle, the question is, are you ready for this?