JOHN ZORN

4.5 stars. I would describe Zorn's discography as intimidating to say the least. He has hundreds of releases starting in the late seventies right up to today. The only musician I know to surpass him is the prog-related guitarist BUCKETHEAD who started about 15 years later than Zorn, yet has surpassed him by a wide margin. It's laughable to think that anyone could take us on an album by album tour of Zorn's albums. Just to put this in perspective, I own and highly recommend five albums Zorn put out between 2012 and 2017. And that's only 5 of the some 45 studio albums he put out over that period. Surely Zorn and Buckethead have studios in their homes, because they apparently live in the studio.

One of the keys for me for opening the door to Zorn's world was experiencing the Zorn-led band ELECTRIC MASADA. More ethnic sounding than Zorn's "Inferno" from 2015, or 2017's "The Garden Of Earthly Delights", both trios. Or this record which fits in between those two, released in 2016 "The Painted Bird" has the same trio as the other two records, but adds two more percussionists, one playing vibes and the other congas/ voudun drums. And so this one is unique of the three with the vibes added, and they sound incredible. They bring a warmth and tone to an album that is just so powerful at times. When you see an album tagged with brutal prog, hang on to your hat.

I have a top four, and I love the opener "Snakeskin" which is the longest, approaching 8 minutes. This one settles into a groove 1 1/2 minutes in after being led by vibes and some powerful outbursts to start. The guitar and organ are so impressive here. The drumming 3 minutes in needs to be mentioned as well. Track three called "Ravens" continues the quality and heavy outbursts, but "Nettles" is where they ease up with plenty of atmosphere and vibes. I just am so into the "sound" here. "Night" is my final top four. Depth and heaviness. The guitar is on fire after 4 minutes and man it gets heavy after that.

So the little taste that I have taken from this massive discography that Zorn has created has actually made me feel quite content and happy. Before these records, along with "Mount Analogue" from 2012 and "Interpretation Of Dreams" from 2017 I had only experienced "Naked City" from 1990 which left me unimpressed to say the least. I at least have a sweet spot when I comes to Zorn, and I'm more than okay with that.

Out of the many big experimental groups I have heard of, there have only really been three that have done a sort of soundtrack for the 1920s film Nosferatu, though for John Zorn it was more of a soundtrack to a Polish play adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, however the music does fit quite well with that old film.

If I were to rank the three big "Nosferatu" albums, this one would probably be in the middle for me. A lot of John Zorn's works are good, especially considering his massive discography, and Nosferatu is no exception. The combination of classical and jazz do quite a good job at showing a very moody atmosphere. The more ambient pieces too are very interesting to me since they feel like they heighten the more fearful factor that comes with the medium of vampires, which is pretty good.

It helps quite a bit that this record feels quite unique from the other stuff Zorn has made too. A lot of John's records are unique, don't get me wrong, but this album certainly has an atmosphere that it can call its own. The only album I feel might come close to this is Kristallnacht, and while that record's themes and atmospherics are very poignant, I think Nosferatu's darkness is quite different from Kristallnacht's.

Though while it is unique, it is also not quite as interesting as some other works of his. To me, it is a good record, but there is nothing that really stands out about it. Hearing it, one can definitely feel that it is more background music than another big John Zorn effort like The Crucible or Interzone. The only track that sort of stands out, aside from the avant-garde metal tracks, is The Stalking, mostly because the chill vibes I get while listening to it does add something good to the experience.

Speaking of which, the few instances of avant-garde metal is just weird to me. They feel really out of place on this album for me. They're good listens, sure, but they kinda distract from most of the tracks on here, and they don't really add much in terms of atmosphere for me.

A solid record to be sure. I say this is one of those cases where I suggest not listening to this until after you heard more stuff from John Zorn's catalog, but if you have the time maybe check it out in the background. It may not be Faust Wakes Nosferatu good, but what John Zorn does here isn't too shabby, all things considered.

Best tracks: The Stalking, Stalker Dub

Worst tracks: Desolate Landscape, Hypnosis, Nosferatu

The eleventh volume of John Zorn's improvised organ live album sequence took place in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral as part of a concert series celebrating the composer's seventieth birthday. A large crowd of Zorn's closest family, friends, and colleagues were present for his performance, making it a rather special installment. It is also a special volume as it is inspired by and dedicated to Terry Riley, a pioneering composer of minimalism in the jazz and classical worlds, and one of Zorn's biggest inspirations and most important mentors.

The first piece, "A New Door Opens" begins with bell tones, gently waking up the listener and drawing attention to themselves before fading into proper organ tones. From the moment the bells cease Zorn launches into an intense series of buildups and cluster chords that rise and fall constantly, punctuated only by the occasional wind chimes. These extended buildups are often made up of just a handful of notes and take so long to get to where they're going that one's ears becomes accustomed to the drone and it's easy to get lost, wondering when the note(s) will end, or if they ever even started. Across multiple minutes Zorn constructs chords comprised of semitones that pulse in the ear, and he often plays them so loudly that it's unbearable. I found myself thankful for the breath of fresh air provided by those wind chime moments - having something to focus on that's actually moving and changing. It almost ends up feeling like a Swans album for solo organ, an equally bizarre, repulsive, and morbidly intriguing proposition.

The performance must certainly have been a special moment for Zorn, and the improvised pieces he made during it are certainly impressive and academically intriguing, but even at my most generous I couldn't call this a particularly listenable album.

Track Rating: A New Door Opens (6), Elissa's Tears (6).

Overall Rating: 6/10, or, 3 Stars.

— First review of this album —

The thirteenth volume of the Hermetic Organ series was recorded live at the Biennale Musica Venezia, a festival of contemporary music. The improvisation was performed by Zorn on two antique organs, and much like the twelfth volume of the series, this album sees Zorn walking back and forth between the two instruments, utilizing the extremes of the organs as well as the extremes of his physical and mental capabilities.

The performance lasted a combined 49 minutes and despite being broken up into just two pieces the length is not balanced whatsoever. "Satyricon", the first piece, lasts a whopping forty-two minutes! The second piece, "Epistola", lasts just under seven minutes in comparison, leading to a slightly unbalanced album experience, though it can hardly be imagined that these performances are given with the intention of making any sort of conventional album product, and therefore it is hard to "deduct points" from a scored review for such considerations. I am left wishing, though, that the second piece lasted at least a little longer, as some of the motifs and crescendos sound hurried or hastily abandoned. It would've been nice to hear him develop them over, say, another five to ten minutes.

In comparison to the most recent few installments of the series, Volume 13 boasts a wider range of textures, as Zorn uses the richly aged voices of the horns, reeds, and flutes of the two organs and pits them against each other in a constant clash of pitches and timbres. Structurally, he also changes movements within his improvisations more frequently than on previous performances. While there are certainly still long build-ups, droning chord clusters, and notes held interminably, it seems to my ears that he is leaping motif/development to motif/development and from voice to voice far sooner than usual. This leads to a more tolerable listening experience than his usual hermetic offerings, as there are new things to notice more often. Of course, it is still a long and difficult journey that will test one's ears with extreme dissonances, painfully loud high notes, harsh timbres, and long-windedness.

As always, Zorn provides the listener with a challenging and rewarding experience. One is compelled to hear these performances as a sort of musica esoterica, as they so strangely contravene one's expectations of music. It seems at times we are hearing music from outside the mortal fold, a sort of Chthonic radio transmission our minds can't and shouldn't fully comprehend? yet.

Track Rating: Satyricon (7), Epistola (6).

Overall Rating: 6.5/1o, or, 3 Stars, rounded down.

— First review of this album —

The twelfth volume in the improvised live organ series by prolific avant-garde maestro John Zorn also serves as the composer's tribute to one of his greatest influences, the 15th-Century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. The album was recorded live in the Great Church in Den Bosch (fittingly, the birthplace of the painter himself) in November 2023 as part of Zorn's 70th birthday celebrations. Comprising just two pieces, the album is one of the strangest in the Hermetic Organ series, not least because the composer for once forgoes the strict solo nature of these releases and collaborates with his longtime friend and colleague, jazz keyboardist John Medeski. Conceptually, the improvisations are based around fantastical religious imagery, forming a sort of tone poem meant to represent a journey into and across the underworld.

Part one of the album, Crossing the River Styx, is a solo recording performed by Zorn alone, experimenting with the dual organs in the church before his recital began. The listener may hear Zorn walking back and forth between the two instruments, adjusting components and talking to himself. While the piece is technically just a physical test of the capabilities of both performer and instrument, it never comes across as less than the second track. Getting into the mindset for his later performance, beginning to approach the subject matter tonally, Zorn introduces himself to the instruments and introduces us to hell, crossing the proverbial river physically and emotionally. The music takes a great deal from early 20th century modernist composers, particularly the Expressionist school (which makes sense considering the setting of the recital). Zorn seamlessly slides between sparse textures - just a handful of dissonant notes - stretching out infinitely long, creating a sense of emptiness and unease, and dense chord clusters that rise to ever more painful dynamic heights, testing the listener's ear and tolerance. The harsh tonalities and total disregard for convention bring to mind the dark, eerie works of Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, and Cage, but of course come marked with the indelible stamp of Zorn's singular creativity.

Part two of the album, A Pilgrimage Through Hell, stretches even longer than part one at nearly half an hour. For this piece, actually recorded during his solo recital, Zorn is joined by an assistant (the aforementioned Medeski) to manage the two organs simultaneously. One is forced to sympathize with the need for assistance, having heard his septuagenarian form pace back and forth constantly for the entire first track. Again Zorn channels the Teutonic modernists, this time taking the listener on a horrifying journey across the underworld. For unbearably long stretches, Zorn and Medeski drone on high-pitched dissonances that attack the ear, pound on low organ ostinati that one feels in their chest more than hears with their ear, and slide between both extremely loud and extremely quiet dynamic levels (remaining on one or the other for so long it becomes uncomfortable). This is dark music of powerful imagery much like Schoenberg's "Pierrot lunaire", art that succeeds in becoming so emotionally and mentally unpleasant that it creates an almost physical sensation. As bad as that sounds, this occurs as the direct intention of a master composer and performer, and for that reason I find it impressive, compelling, and powerful. It's a compelling representation of the abject horror beyond death, as well as the emptiness of the world of the dead.

In all, this album stands as a document of an impressive live improvisation by a man in his 70th year and is an academically fascinating bit of contemporary classical music. That being said, it's not a particularly listenable thing, and requires one's full attention and patience throughout its forty-six minute runtime. It's a great musical work, but it's a difficult listen that I likely wouldn't return to often.

Track Rating: Part One: Crossing the River Styx (7.5), Part Two: A Pilgrimage Through Hell (8).

Overall Rating: 7.75/10, or, 4 Stars (rounded up)

Is there a more prolific artist than John Zorn? Once he's composed and recorded an album he moves on to the next one. He has no interest in playing that music again. He released nine studio albums in 2023. With such a massive discography you almost need to hire a guide don't you? I'm not that person, in fact, it's been tough with my taste to find something he has done that is in my wheelhouse. He's an Avant-garde composer, conductor and sax player for the most part, but he wears more hats than that.

It was really his ELECTRIC MASADA project that opened my eyes to a part of his world that I am truly fascinated with. Such a powerful band with Zorn sounding like Pharoah on the sax. Some stuff he's done solo in the ball park to this music would be his "Simulacrum" series. The album I'm reviewing is from 2015 and part of that series. I would also highly recommend "The Painted Bird" and "The Garden Of Earthly Delights" from 2016 and 2017 respectively, and part of that series. I also found two of his more mellow records "Mount Analogue" from 2012 and "The Interpretation Of Dreams" from 2017 to be well worth tracking down.

Zorn takes care of the compositions and arrangements here while sitting back and letting this dynamic trio play his music. We get Kenny Grohowski on drums, Matt Hollneberg on guitar and John Medeski on organ. A power trio if there ever was one. Seven tracks worth 45 minutes and we get hammered on this one. It's such an interesting setup with the drums being such a key, and he is incredible. Then the organ and guitar solo but they also create layers at times.

The highlight is the almost 21 minute title track. What I love about this one is the space. The calms. Contrasts to the power that is on display throughout. It also contains some brief brutal prog moments, where they get extreme. This song is more about soundscapes early on but after 7 minutes it's all about the energy overload. But contrasts continue. I also want to mention the closer "Dreamplay" because it is also different like the title track. It's dark early with guitar before kicking in hard around 1 1/2 minutes. I like the contrasts on this one. The other five tracks just lay an absolute beating on us.

A solid 4 stars, and like the album's title and cover, this thing burns out of control.

Idols paying tribute to idols!

Art and music, two crucial concepts in the life of ordinary people like us, but most important, to iconic people like John Zorn and Bill Laswell, two amazing, crazy and experimental artists who have been exploding their creativity for ages, mostly in the jazz, experimental and prog scene. This time, they decided to release an album in which they could pay hommage to three musicians who have passed away, but whose legacy has prevailed and will prevail for so many years: saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Wayne Shorter, and percussionist Milford Graves.

Those musicians have left a strong legacy in the jazz scene (mainly), and this album entitled 'Memoria' gives us a clear message: they will forever live in our memory. Zorn and Laswell were lucky enough to collaborate with them, so in fact they were not only colleagues, but also friends, and I believe it is a precious detail this duo decided to release this album in a heartfelt way, knowing the late musicians recently left this planet (Graves 2021, Sanders 2022, Shorter 2023).

In this 3-song album we will find a quite interesting show where Zorn's saxophone and Laswell's bass do the talking. First they delight us with 'Pharoah Sanders', a 15-minute track where both musicians let us know why have they been working together for so many years: their connection is incredible. I love how they understand each other, how each of them produce a diversity of sounds, nuances, textures, how they embrace improvisation and produce countless feelings, because yeah, there is tranquility and peace, but there is also chaos and density, colorful atmospheres with spiritual and spacey touches. I love the bass sound at half the song, it creates dense but gentle atmospheres at the same time, it creates the background while sax produces charming sounds here and there.

'Milford Graves' starts in a chaotic way, Zorn's sax being played loud and endless, producing some tension while Laswell's bass cadency contrasts and later join the chaos. This is a quite interesting track because the two musicians create deep experimental atmospheres, adventurous sounds that both flow and collide, so it is a mixture of colours and emotions, and though there are moments one can feel a bit lost, one is in fact quite involved in that hypnotic chaos, it is great to realize about it, but the two musicians know very well how to produce those mesmerizing effects in the listener.

'Wayne Shorter' is the shortest (pun intended) haha of the album. A great track where we can appreciate once again their improvisaiional skills and the interplay and connection between both instruments and minds. Creativity with no boundaries is something we can relate with the five names here, because though Zorn and Laswell are the magicians, Shorter, Graves and Sanders are/were the inspiration.

A quite nice tribute, another Zorn release not to miss, however, I bet this might not be for everyone's likes, so my final rate will be three stars.

Enjoy it!

Trying to understand what John Zorn makes is like finding a straw of hay in a stack of needles while blind and armless, while in an active warzone, whilst covered in molasses. To put it bluntly, it is really hard to even know what this strange man is gonna do next, or what he even did after listening to his music. Simply put, his music is the definition of a fever dream. I have heard plenty of artists who try their hand at more weirder, surreal directions in their musical catalogs, but John Zorn just has a different type of dog in him that puts David Sylvian and Mike Patton to stupefaction. One moment he is making a chamber jazz album involving Jewish harmonies and rhythms, then next make a surf rock smooth jazz record, then make a brutal progressive metal album that is more manic than Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's entire discography, and then go back to making Jewish chamber jazz music.

To say John Zorn is mad would be like saying water is wet or that fire is hot. I guess this is also why I kinda love his music, though. He's all over the place, making every record I listen to feel like an experience. While I may not consider all of his works to be winners, they never made me click away just by how intriguing they really are. This year I decided to just listen to what he has brought to the table. Earlier I got a taste of his more brutal prog style thanks to Spinoza. While Spinoza intrigued me on this whimsical human being, I think Baphomet is what made me want to ride this roller coaster a bit further.

Like many long working artists, John Zorn has a knack for making a lot of long songs, especially proggy epics. However, sometimes he likes to make and release albums that are just one song, usually 30-40 minutes long, and that is what Baphomet is. It is a 39 minute extravaganza of avant-prog excitability.

The whole track is never-not exciting to me. While I certainly have gotten quite familiar with it in recent times, I still cannot deny its force upon me each time I listen. No minute on here is wasted, with each bit of the work out feeling like a purebred experience. Even within the more quieter moments, my mind feels a sense of thrill when hearing each little bit of this epic. Not even within its end does it let up, giving a conclusion that feels as monstrous and foreboding as the title describes. It is pure instrumental prog fun, and certainly a top dog within the more extreme works of The Mars Volta and Ruins to me.

I guess if there is a critique I can give is that it does not include Zorn's saxophone skills. Now obviously not every John Zorn release gives him saxophone duties, since he is a lot more of a composer, much like Bach or Mozart, but I think some delicious saxophone workings could go well. Maybe after the calm, surfy rock bit in the middle can include a massive saxophone solo on top of the extreme guitar, keyboard, and drum workout. This is kind of why I slightly prefer Spinoza over this. Both are certainly on equal grounds of amazing records, but I think if I wanna introduce someone to the crazy 4-d chess of John Zorn, I probably would say Spinoza is the way to go as it feels like a proper introduction to both Zorn's skills as a composer, but also a saxophonist.

Baphomet is one of many, many ideas of John Zorn that has been crafted through his long life of works. While it personally isn't his all time finest work to me (still looking for that Zorn masterpiece), calling it anything but an amazing record would be putting the 39 minutes of grand music to shame. It is a record I think anyone with a more crazy backbone should check out, especially those who may already be familiar with what John Zorn can make. It's a dramatic routine of madness.

It was like 70 years ago when our world saw the birth of John Zorn, one of those artists who we can name as a lunatic, one of a kind, alien, etc., who nowadays continues to create art in a crazy way, putting him as one of the most prolific artists of our era. Though we might associate his name with music in most of the cases, he is not just an ordinary musician, he is also linked to films, painting, performance, and a large etc., which is why we must consider him a true artist.

Well, in that so prolific career he has given birth to several great projects which feature different musicians / artists carefully selected by Zorn himself, people who may have started as a colleagues, and then morphed into bandmates and why not, friends. One of those projects is Incerto, a jazz-oriented ensamble, a quartet of great musicians who, just like Zorn, love experimentation and aren't afraid of tresspassing boundaries. These band was conceived recently in 2022, however, they have now released four studio albums, being 'Homenaje a Remedios Varo', their latest one (October 2023) at the time this review is being published.

The title itself made me feel curious because I love Remedios Varo paintings, so it is remarkable that an artist this big like Zorn wanted to pay tribute to another one-of-a-kind artist like the Spanish painter, so I had to listen to this as soon as possible.

Well, this album features 9 tracks that make a total time of 40 minutes in which Julian Lage on guitars, Brian Marsella on piano, Jorge Roeder on bass and Ches Smith on drums (of course, guided by Zorn), take us through a very interesting musical crossover, where jazz leads, of course, but it wonderfully coexists with mysticism, colours, and art as a whole.

It is a fantastic trip with countless nuances made by constant rhythm and mood changes, a wonderful complexity that can be in fact linked to Remedios Varo's paintings and its magical depth, which is why we can find some references in the songs' titles, such as 'Somnambula', which take us to Varo's enthusiasm for dreams; or 'A Wilderness of Mirrors' which, of course, represents the mirror as a constant element of her work; or 'The Three Wands', which makes a takes her relationship with tarot, to name some examples.

It is a very visual album, we could even think it would work as a kind of soundtrack of the painter's works. Of course, it is reasonable to mention that the musical experience is wonderful here and can be appreciated even without linking it with Remedios Varo, and that's merit of the four musicians, people that has been playing for years, we can tell it by listening to the well assembled songs, in spite of its constant mood and rhythm changes.

The value of the four musicians is equitable, they understand and complement each other, they never shadow themselves, and they even have some moments where each and every one of them create a brief but heartfelt solo. I had the luck of seeing Incerto last december in Mexico City, and yeah, it was an exquisite experience because they use their creative and performing skills to reach one goal: to share and enjoy art. Just like in this album.

Enjoy it!

Review originally posted at www.therocktologist.com

An excellent release!

John Zorn has to be one of the top 5 musicians alive with the biggest discography, he is a prolific mind who never stops or sleeps, and who is always aiming to create and to share. Among his creations, he has tones of albums and projects, and one of them is named Chaos Magick, featuring amazing musicians from the jazz, prog, avant-garde scenes. As far as I know, this line-up had released four records prior to this one, entitled Parrhesiastes, which saw the light the past November 1st.

Sometimes while digging through Zorn's discography might be difficult to find a clear musical path, because he is always changing and exploring, so in a same year you might listen to a classical guitar album, or maybe a funk- oriented record, or why not, a prog rock one. This time, he is giving us a feast of musical genres united in one single record which is divided in three long compositions, so be ready, because this journey will be quite interesting.

The album opens with 'In The Footsteps of Hermes', the first minute is a soft conversation between keys and drums, Kenny Grohowski is a hell of a drummer, by the way. As you can imagine, in long songs there are always changes in time and mood, and here it is not the exception. After some 3 minutes of a jazzy, delicious sound, electric guitar appears and all together explode into a progressive rock feast where the energy of drums, guitar and keyboards is spread. Then after minute five they stop, and begin to create a new passage where mystery appear, even silence. Of course, we can witness a vast amount of textures and nuances during the whole track, in the end we are surrounded by amazing musicians, such as the one and only Jon Medeski, as well as Brian Marsella and Matt Hollenberg.

'The Eventual Valorization of the Perhaps' is a track full of surprises, and it reflects once again the creativity of Zorn and the amazing performing skills of his four bandmates. Its first passage is nice and dreamy, however, after a minute it changes, becomes faster and embraces a jazzy and prog fusion sound that is truly enjoyable to our ears and souls. Then some funky guitar that suddenly morph into a metal-like, and then vanishes to join that soft and delicious jazzy sound keys and drums produce. Important to say that parrhesia is a term used in ancient Greece, which means something like freedom of speech and using the truth for the common being, in spite of personal risks, of course, parrhesiastes is the person who uses it, and I believe this album reflects it somehow, because the musicians are all free to do whatever they want, and all of them tell the truth through their instruments, through music.

Finally, 'Form, Object and Desire', which is a vertiginous track that shares loads of sounds and emotions, it goes from tension to excitement, from doubt to certainty, and in the end all is freedom, so we, in real life, have a mixture of emotions and attitudes, just like the music. I like the guitar work, sometimes soft, even acoustic, but mostly exploding. Organ and electric piano produce countless nuances, and once again, the drums are outstanding. Is it rock, or prog, or jazz? It actually doesn't matter, the journey is quite interesting, one just have to receive its diverse passages with open arms and ears.

This is a great record and one of my most played albums this November, so if you like Zorn and good music in general, this will make your day.

Enjoy it!