Search - John Zorn :: Bribe

Soundtrack for the cartoon version of "Miller's Crossing"

SPM | Eugene, Oregon | 12/06/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Am I the first to review "The Bribe"? I'll make it quick.This album is jammed with as much music as you can fit on a single CD. It's the soundtrack to an imaginary noir film. You'll have fun trying to piece together the plot from the song titles. As always with Zorn, the musicians are fantastic. The musical styles are old-fashioned, but the composition is very modern. (Or, to put it another way, the styles are timeless and the composition is ahead of its time. No wait! The styles are . . . groovy . . . and the composition is . . . loopy.)I feel better now."

Some of the best of Zorn

ars_moriendi49 | Scotland | 03/09/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's easy to prejudice against John Zorn. It's easy to dismiss a lot of non-pop music. However, anyone who knows of Zorn should know how varied he is, and what you see isn't what you get. And any self-proud musician should open up to the bribe. I'm not big on 'jazz' but the fusion of styles on this album is incredible - it reaches a point where you no longer look upon the music as being this or that - it's just music, great music, that is hard to explain. The whole piece is just a great 'adventure', like film score, very interesting, strong yet subtle melodies, great arrays or riffs and rhythms from what is a fairly standard band line-up. Twinkling bells, jazz bass, odd samples, rock riffs, horns and sax, are put together in a way that is never self-indulgent or unlistenable - well, for me. Bits stick in your head, and I just find it a nice musical change, this CD will last a life time. And I'll add that the tracks are proper `songs' with many nice changes of genre, time signature, orchestration and the whole piece has a great atmosphere. If you are even looking at Zorn stuff - get this!!"

"Spillane" +

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 03/03/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"As John Zorn began moving beyond his early work as ultra-abstract improviser, he started to head in the direction of thematic structure, of setting up a series of rules and motifs around a single theme-- his composition "Spillane" (available on Godard/Spillane) is the best example of this-- Zorn dug deep into the source material and put together "file cards" with the different themes, rules, suggestions and directions on them. He then took an ensemble and recorded these file cards in some sequence or another. Where the line between composition and improvisation, or more abstractly, the line between composer and performer, is often unclear. Nonetheless, unlike his earlier system of improvisation (the Game Pieces), this tended to provide a significantly easier to digest set of music. With a large part of the band that recorded "Spillane"-- a virtual who's who of mid-80s downtown New York improvisers (Ehrlich, Staley, Quine, Coleman, Horvitz, Previte, the composer and half a dozen others), Zorn recorded this for a radio play.



The results are, quite frankly, about what you'd expect. I suspect most folks looking at this have heard "Spillane"-- in it's way, this is more of the same, although it sustains a narrative a bit better. I'll point out that I was never really in love with the file card stuff-- it has its moments, but by and large and seems a bit lacking in that feeling of real immediacy that Zorn's best work has. I'm sure this is because of the element of storytelling in the subject matter, and while the recording certainly has its moments, usually based around a great performance from one musician or another-- Quine's monster r&b solo on "Meters", Zorn blowing a fierce blues on "The Taxman Cometh" and pretty much everyone on "Victoria Lake", by and large I find that it doesn't completely sustain my interest.



Having said that, if you loved "Spillane", you'll probably love this. Not completely my cup of tea, but good for a lot of other folks. If you haven't heard "Spillane"-- start there, then check this out if you find you want some more."