"My musical world is like a little prism. You look through it and it goes off in a million different directions. Since every genre is the same, all musicians should be equally respected. It doesn't matter if it's jazz, blues, or classical. They're all the same."

The Big Gundown

recorded 1984 and 1985
originally released 1985
re-released and remastered with additional tracks in 2000

On this album, Zorn wrote new arrangements of soundtrack music originally composed by one of his heroes, Ennio Morricone. Over forty musicians and vocalists perform.

The 1985 edition had ten songs, beginning with the title track and ending with a "guitar shoot-out" (Once Upon a Time in the West). The 2000 re-issue adds six more songs, including two versions of The Ballad of Hank McCain (one with vocals and one without).

This is one of John Zorn's best albums. Two or three of the tracks feature squealing guitars or women screaming bloody murder, so it's not easy to play this CD for a mixed crowd.

Zorn: Over the fifteen years since these recordings were made, Morricone has become more and more important in retrospect. A composer who has combined classical, pop, rock, jazz and world music, every instrument on the planet, and just about every compositional technique you can think of (and many you can't), Ennio is truly one of the last giants in film scoring.

In spite of the sad Hollywood trend to bland, impersonal orchestrations and of "dropping the needle" onto saleable rap and pop songs, Morricone has continued to remain himself — and impress me, not so much with experiments and new discoveries (which is what initially knocked me out thirty-five years ago) as with his consistently high level of craft and integrity.

Godard, Spillane

recorded 1985, 1986, 1987
released 1985
reissued 1999

The title tracks on this album are musical tributes to two of John Zorn's favorite artists, a filmmaker and a novelist. He admires Godard's ability to "straddle the Hollywood and experimental independent film traditions." He sees Godard as "a philosopher who uses the medium of film."

And Spillane? Zorn says he admires the "extreme nature of Spillane's vision." Spillane's work "had elements of jazz, it had elements of soundtrack, it had that kind of sleazy rhythm-and-blues edge that I always loved, and it's about New York. So I had all these things that I knew were just perfect for me."

Spillane begins with a woman's scream that segues into a light jazz number. From there, the music shifts and flows from one section to another: spoken passages, brief catches of atmospheric sound, musical interludes, sound effects, etc. It's a sequence of audible references to women, booze, gunplay, smoky nightclubs, and chainsmoking men. There are sixty sections in twenty-five minutes, each seamlessly connected to the next.

If someone made a movie based on Mickey Spillane's books, and then condensed that movie down to a twenty-five minute trailer, the audio track would sound like Spillane.

When a single composition contains noises, guided improvisation, written passages and a variety of genres and unnotable musical shapes, the problem of unity becomes particularly compelling. Unity in a composition means that each and every moment has a reason for being there, and that every sound can be explained within a system. Using a dramatic subject (Godard, Spillane, Duras, Duchamp, Genet) as a unifying device was a revelation. It insures that all musical moments, regardless of form or content, will be held together by relating in some way to the subject's life or work.

File cards are a convenient and versatile method of storing ideas. They were used by film directors such as Hitchcock, Welles, Lang and Lynch. A compulsive list-maker, I began using this method as far back as high school and it informed the creation of many of my works, from the "visual music" of the Theater of Musical Optics to my arrangements of Morricone and Kurt Weill in 1983.

This system was eventually expanded into what has become known as my file card compositions, of which Godard and Spillane are two of the first and purest examples. Beginning with an intense period of research — reading books, listening to music and watching films related to the chosen subject — musical and dramatic ideas were jotted down on file cards. These cards were then sifted through, ordered, and fleshed out with the aid of detailed written passages, melodies, fragments, and orchestrational ideas. The band was then chosen and taken into the recording studio.

The Bribe    variations and extensions on Spillane

recorded 1986
released 1998

Spy vs. Spy

recorded 1988
released 1989

Recorded in August of 1988, this is John Zorn's hardcore interpretation of Ornette Coleman's music. Zorn plays saxophone in the right channel. Tim Berne plays saxophone in the left. Mark Dresser plays bass. There are two drummers: Joey Baron and Michael Vatcher.

The music is chaotic and repetitive. It sounds like a mediocre live recording, with the drums blended together under waves of screaming saxophones. The bass is almost nonexistent.

Elegy

recorded 1991
released 1991

This is Zorn's musical tribute to the work of Jean Genet. There are four tracks: blue, yellow, pink, and black. The songs are spare — passages of music drift back and forth, intercut with sound effects and human voices.

Jean Genet was a French writer, born in 1910. He wrote The Thief's Journal, based on his early twenties when he lived on the streets as a beggar and prostitute. Un Chant D'Amour is a 28-minute film written and directed by Genet in 1950.

Kristallnacht

recorded November 1992
released 1993

This album documents the history of Jews in Europe and Israel in the middle of the 20th century. It's the soundtrack for a movie that doesn't exist. The song titles tell half the story: Shtetl, Never Again, Embers, Rectification, Looking Ahead, Iron Fist, The New Settlement.

From The Essential Klezmer:

John Zorn's turn toward composing overtly Jewish-themed music began with Kristallnacht, recorded November 1992. Latter-day klezmorim David Krakauer and Frank London lend a patina of authenticity to the album's opening track, "Shtetl (Ghetto Life)," a poignant portrayal of Jewish life in Eastern Europe harshly interrupted by the voice of Adolf Hitler and what sounds like the incitement of a mob.

What follows next is twelve minutes of ear-shattering ugliness — Zorn's sonic metaphor for Kristallnacht, the historic Night of Broken Glass, the nationwide pogrom that announced Germany's intention to destroy European Jewry. Zorn rightly makes the horror virtually unlistenable, and the album even comes with a warning from Zorn against "prolonged or repeated listenings."

The pieces continue in this vein, alternating moments of pensive meditation with violent noise, performed by an ensemble including violinist Mark Feldman, guitarist Marc Ribot, and keyboardist Anthony Coleman. (Zorn himself does not play on the album.)

It is a hugely ambitious, audacious piece of work, a musical representation of the Holocaust that will undoubtably earn a place among the supreme musical statements of the twentieth century.

In Zorn's massive catalogue of albums, a few stand out. This is one of those albums.

Music for Children

recorded April to August 1998
released October 1998

Taboo & Exile

recorded 1999
released October 1999

This is Zorn's art-rock album. Although it includes some atmospheric tiki music and a few string trios, the overall impression is one of pounding drums and heavy metal guitar.

And that's a good thing. Taboo & Exile is a guide to most of the musical styles he has worked in during the past decade. If you want to get into Zorn but you haven't heard a single album yet, start with this one.

Each song is based on repetition and pacing. The guitarists and horn players skate over the thin ice of the rhythm section. In some cases, the repetition becomes hypnotic (Oracle and Koryojang). In others, it rises and falls in waves of coordinated sound (Thaalapalassi and Sacrifist). Half of these songs would fit comfortably somewhere on a Tool album. Or maybe Slayer — the drums on the three heaviest tracks are played by Dave Lombardo.

The Gift

recorded 2001 ?
released April 2001

That makes it a strange addition to the Zorn catalogue. It seems that, after writing everything from improvised hardcore to S/M symphonies, he decided to write something sweet and gentle. It's as if Metallica made a disco album.

The thirteen musicians play in a variety of exotic styles, accented by Zorn's American sensibility. He seems to be filtering world music through the Manhattan avant garde.

Bridge to the Beyond, for example, is a hybrid of ambient and lounge jazz, complete with humming theremin. (A theremin is an early form of synthesizer that makes flying saucer sounds. Once you hear it, you'll say, "Oh yeah. I've heard that before.") Cutting Stone is a trance song built on a reggae beat. At the center of the album is Mao's Moon, featuring Dave Douglas on trumpet. It sounds like the love theme to a sentimental B movie.

I.A.O.

recorded 2002 ?
released May 2002

For the fourth Music Romance album, Zorn wrote songs for Satan. Citing Kenneth Anger and Aleister Crowley as influences, he wrote this collection of offbeat rhythms, sexual moans, and ceremonial overtures. He's even thrown in some heavy metal and abstract electronic music.

It starts with an Invocation. The song is quiet and dark, played with a church organ, chimes, gongs, a distant choir, and rolling waves of percussion. It's followed by Sex Magick — thirteen minutes of tribal drumming.

The third song, Sacred Rites of the Left Hand Path, begins with a looped keyboard phrase and quiet handclaps. Jamie Saft plays descending melodies over the top on piano. Distorted organ sounds fade in and out.