Related:
Painkiller - Execution Ground (1994)
The final installment of a trilogy of albums that found John Zorn at his most accessible by a very wide margin. (Actually, this man has about 4 thousand albums, of which I've heard maybe 20-25, so for all I know, he might have an album of vocal jazz standards sung by Norah Jones.) Ethereal but propulsive jazz fusion powered by a glimmering cloud of vibraphone, harp, piano, guitar, and more. Borders on easy listening at times. If, when you think John Zorn, you think chaotic jazz-grind or discordant avant-garde, this record might blow your mind a bit.
Track listing:
1. Enchantress
2. Ishtar
3. Heptameron
4. White Magick
5. Drawing Down the Moon
6. Beyond the Infinite
7. Ode to Delphi
You should also listen to:
ZORN IS GOD.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great Zorn album (release no. 2006) and a nice surprise as I have 100's of Zorn discs to re-import to itunes & now I have one less to do :) "The Goddess...." is ultra~accessible Zorn, as you were saying. Yes one can occasionally use descriptives like 'breezy' 'laid back' bla bla with even the NYC legend & living sound machine that is JZ. Truly he's the most prolific artist I can think of, perhaps Yamatsuka Tetsurō aka Yamantaka EYE/Yamatsuka/ aka bands like Boredoms, Hanatarash and well it hurts my head to think of it, he has I think 50+ aliases and the same for one-off projects and bands. He's a mad-man too, in the best way. But really Zorn aside one would have to look towards a few composers of the Renaissance, and perhaps a couple early-mid 20th century "classical" composers for similar catalog. Back to Yamatsuka it's fitting that many of his records are on Zorn's Tzadik label. Or I should say "some". I have been obsessed with Zorn since the 90s, and have (kid you not) a "Zorn closet" which is dedicated solely to Zorn records & other Tzadik releases. Around 2000 or so. -What records do you know? I know it's a tall order but when I have some time & if I'm lucky a clear enough head I'd be happy to recommend some of my favorites. At the moment I'm listening to his "Hermetic Organ" series, many albums of wild organ improvisations all recorded at various churches, some of the best pipe organs in the world. I caught the New York performance @ St Paul's Chapel.....words fail it was an otherworldly journey :) Also back again go my ears to his many Masada albums, but you likely know them they're classic Zorn. --Regards dood
ReplyDeleteI honestly am nowhere near as well-versed in John Zorn as I could be. I know the Naked City records, the Painkiller records, and a bunch of kinda random solo works -- Elegy, Madness Love & Mysticism, Chimeras, Magick, Mysterium, Rituals, the trilogy mentioned in this post, Simulacrum, The True Discoveries of Witches and Demons, and maybe a few more? Would definitely love to hear your recommendations!
DeleteSounds just like Zorn's Dreamers projects. https://johnzornresource.com/the-dreamers-2008
Deletealso made Dreamers Christmas
https://johnzornresource.com/a-dreamers-christmas
Delightful! Mellow and soothing but weird enough to keep you slightly off balance.
The Petra Haden album is pretty close to what you describe as that Norah Jones thing. 🙂 Having heard like 200 out of the total 300 releases this is definitely on the more accessable side of which he made just a few too many like 12 years ago. I had been keeping up but with his output for almost 20 years by then and felt people still calling him a "musical terrorrist" got stuck in the early nineties. It got way too accessible and same-y to my ears. The christmas album (and admittedly shipping costs and customs starting to see orders from non-EU countries as a cash cow) Anyway, a 10 year break from the recorded output did me good and made me appreciate this stuff and esp. this one again, so in the past years of the plague I did some catching up. Because I liked the Hermetic Organ releases a lot and also because finally his orchestral compositions started to hit me finally.
ReplyDelete