John Zorn — Songs From The Hermetic Theatre

On his latest offerings John Zorn pays tribute to persons that influenced his work. This time he performed (almost) all music himself including his first piece of computer music.

The CD starts off with an electronic piece for Harry Smith, an artist from whom Zorn learned 'alchemical synthesis' (don't ask me!). The piece, American Magus, sounds like Autechre having a serious computercrash. Edgy noisebursts give an odd sense of rhythm though not one to tap along with your foot. A fluid sequence of 'round' beeps give the piece a sort of flowing quality. I'm not sure what feeling is conveyed here but I somehow like the sound of the piece.

In The Very Eye Of Night is a little bit easier to relate to. It's a piece with organic noises and somewhat 'dry' ambient drones. The piece is an homage to Maya Deren, a American filmmaker. The piece starts off with a sample of her talking about the female aspects of her art. The next part in the Filmworks-series will contain scores Zorn made for her movies. I like this composition a lot, the dark atmosphere appeals to me in a more usual way than American Magus.

Being John Zorn's first piece of computermusic, The Nerve Key is a composition of extreme highs and lows. Beeps around the threshold of what the human ear can hear make this a hard listen. There are deep, thumping sub-bass sounds and distorted noises. The structure makes me think of the acoustic version of Hockey. The piece is built for a large part with staccato hits of sound. The inlay calls it 'sonic hieroglyphs' and it's as easy to read hieroglyphs as it is to 'understand' these sounds. But as with hieroglyphs, you can like them without understandinging the meaning. Maybe the title gives some explanation: little electric pulses that the nervecenter has a key to, to translate them into actions distributing them to the corresponding parts of the brain. But that's just me...

The last piece, BeuysBlock, is somewhat reminiscent of Zorn's very early piece Mikhael Zoetrope. Lots of objects are used to make noises. Varying from metal pipes, dried leaves, moustache scissors to the carcass of a hare (I haven't found that sound yet) to more conventional instruments like maracas and piano. Jennifer Choi guests as violinplayer. This piece is very melancholic due to the sad piano and violin arrangements. The array of sounds add to the atmosphere, although others may think it rather disturbs it. Some sounds, like the electric fan, sound like they are actually in your room because they are recorded with no reverb or other effects. At the end the piece turns somewhat grim due to agressive piano stabs. Overall I think this last piece is the most melodic and closest to 'normal' music on this record.

Although music like this puzzles me, I play it quite frequently. I like it on a level that I do not fully understand. Probably that's why I like Zorn's music so much, his work varies from music that is very easy to relate to and music that I learned to like to music that I probably never really understand. I like the challenge though...