Search - John Zorn :: Taboo & Exile 2

Yet another direction for Zorn

D. Mauer | Los Angeles, CA United States | 01/04/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Music Romance" is the name of a new series of newly recorded material of Zorn's. If you are a fan of his 90s work, then you should like this as well. This is Volume 2 and it is more listenable than volume 1, though more appropriately I should say there are fewer "difficult listening" parts than Vol. 1. Maybe some other Zron fans disagree, but when he mixes styles too much, I have a hard time enjoying any of them, especially when he mixes the hardcore and hard improv with his mellower sparse compositions. Anyway, the melodic stuff here is reminiscent of the Masada string style with Feldman Friedlander and Cohen doing usual great work. There are a couple of metal pieces with Mike Patton Dave Lombardo and Bill Laswell. And there are two percussion-only tracks that stress melody over rhythm with Joey Baron, and Cyro Baptista that are remarkable. Zorn himself plays very little here by the way, but if you are a fan of Masada and the Filmworks series, you'll likely enjoy this too. The packaging by the way is intricate and amazing - Absolutley beautiful. While some may be offended by it, if you made it this far into Zorn's work, you're probably not one of those people. This isn't the best Zorn album of the past few years, (that may be Filmworks IV for me), but it's up there with his best."

A brand new zorn, yet...

florent delval | Lille france | 04/07/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This new stuff is a kind a sequel to music for children and it avoid some mistakes:no boring 20 minutes wind piece for instance...In few words, it's quite good, nearly the best zorn for few years. so why only 3 stars: because I bought this record like other people bought the last rolling stone...What's new? It's the same masada-like string quartet, it's the same hardcore stuff , here a sound heard in filmworks, there a sound heard elsewere. Maybe i'm unfair, but John zorn seems to be in a dead end street..."

Stolen song.

Lord Chimp | Monkey World | 08/11/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the second volume in John Zorn's Music Romance series. The first album, _Music for Children_, was a diverse work expressing the dark aspects of childhood. Naked-City-style pieces, music box themes, eerie chamber music, wind machines, and more were featured, all musically exploring the album themes. Despite the musical diversity, it fit together quite nicely. _Taboo & Exile_ seems to have a theme presented by the packaging that may or may not be reflected in the music, I have no idea at this point. Beneath the dark album jacket is a bizarrely sexualized photo of a little Japanese girl, even though if you stop and think about it it's not actually sexual in any way in and of itself. So it's a rather striking way of distinguishing between innocence and maturity-adulthood-experience. Actually, reading that Jazziz review Amazon gives us on this page informed me about the "image of Saveur St. Cyr's temple skull tied to a small chair with whip" and I will have to look into that. In any case I haven't made any connection between the package and the music yet. Musically, the album is exotic, darkly sensual, and sad (hmmm). Some of the songs highlight a sense of contrast. For example, "Zeraim" is a remarkable Mediterranean-esque piece for piano, percussion, and strings. Here Zorn shows an ability to hide great complexity and rhythmic variation in melodies that remain pleasant and catchy. "In the Temple of Hadjarim", with mellow free piano and primitivist percussion, is like the integration of intersubjectively foreign Jazz concepts, East meets West. There is "The Possessed" also, a slow, assaultive which conveys great aggression despite its often-minimalist, rapid melodic fragments. The build-up on this one is very intense, and it is the only song Zorn himself plays on, and he contributes some vicious sax. On "Sacrifist", Lombardo's thrash-metal speed comes in handy for an urgent percussion backdrop for the roaring, monster guitars of Fred Frith and Marc Ribot and thick bass feedback from Bill Laswell. This song is quite noisy and frightening yet completely enslaves your attention because it is AWESOME. "Thaalapalassi", with the same lineup as "Sacrifist", is an eerie, primal buildup from pointillism to beastly screeching. It then retreats into the Hellish realm from which it came. Another reviewer on this page described it as "ambient heavy metal" and I wholeheartedly agree with that. "Makkot" and "Mayim" are scored for Eric Friedlander on cello, Mark Feldman on violin, and Greg Cohen on bass -- they are very twisty Masada-esque pieces and they are very good. "Oracle" is a strange, mellow track with a Cyro Baptista percussion loop being run under plucked cello, feather-light organ, and childlike Japanese vocals from Miho Hatori. "Koryojang", a hypnotic percussion duet between Cyro Baptista and Joey Baron, appears twice -- once in its full six-minute form and once as a short reprise with the added tag "end credits" for the final track. End credits for WHAT, I have no idea. From these descriptions (assuming they are coherent), you would be right in thinking this album is very diverse. However, it hangs together _very_ well, much like _Music for Children_ did. But maybe it's more of a metaphysical link than a musical one. "Bulls-Eye", with Mike Patton screaming over a catchy rock groove, doesn't seem to fit but I still like it. Oh, and for anyone who has _Music for Children_ and thinks "Cycles du Nord" was the worst thing ever, you will be happy to know there are no sound sculptures or other whack avant-garde compositions on this album. (Hey, I actually *like* "Cycles du Nord", but anyway you cut it, it IS a song made of wind.) Okay, bad enough that this review is all one paragraph, it probably doesn't even make SENSE. But really, For Zorn newbies and the hardcore fan, this is beautiful, excellent stuff. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED."