Jamie Saft — Sovlanut

Jamie Saft, a New York based organplayer who made several appearances on John Zorn's projects like Music For Children and Filmworks IX, debuts on Zorn's label Tzadik with an original application of Jewish traditions.

The first track 'Kasha Dub' is, as the title already suggests, a dubtrack with middle-Eastern melodies, thus giving Zion it's place in the Jamaican folklore, but in a totally different manner than what we're used to. Jamie is accompanied by Lower East Side regulars like Jim Black (drums) and Chris Speed (clarinet). Black shines in a furious drum 'n' bass beat in the 13 minute-long titletrack, in which Saft's keyboards float around. Mach/Hey is a heavy and slow echo-drenched track where Speeds soloing adds slight Balkan- and Turkish influences to the already rich mixture. The noisy soundscape Midwood Cowboy sounds more like what we're used to from Tzadik. Dissonant electric piano sounds make Miles Davis pop to mind while listening to Tefachim. The album ends with the short track Fresser Dub. Although I like the album a lot there are some dead spots in the record. But that's probably because it's made on an improvisational basis.

Sovlanut sounds like what you would expect from a collaboration of John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Mick Harris, just by adding the current musical obsessions of the individual members. But Painkiller was set up as a free improv jazzcombo with grindcore intensity, so Jamie Saft is here to show us what it could've sounded like.