JOHN ZORN - Iao

"IAO is a suite in seven movements based on alchemy, mysticism, metaphysics and black and white magic, partly inspired by the work of Aleister Crowley and his magical discipline". So say the liner notes. We're overwhelmed with joy and optimism, but, after having a good laugh, we still have to push on. Plenty of guests here. The usual gang orbiting John Zorn, with Bill Laswell, Mike Patton, Greg Cohen, Jim Pugliese, Cyro Baptista. Let's go ahead and listen to these seven movements. Fingers crossed.

The first movement is titled "Invocation". A ritual organ, voices from beyond the grave, the rattle of chains, liturgical percussion, splashing water, filler noodling. A track that never goes beyond the Ossianic climax it sets up. The second movement, "Sex Magick", shifts register entirely: a piece played solely with various percussion instruments, moderately slow and hypnotic, dabbling between third and fourth world with great balance and rationality - the problem is it runs over 13 minutes, and after 5 we're already dying of boredom. Third movement, "Sacred Rites Of The Left Hand Path", raises the bar considerably, an unhealthy, unsettling atmosphere built on a simple electric piano sequence that, slow and inexorable, drags the whole track along as an unstable piano is layered on top - wickedly jazzy, sickly, very noir, with a web of keyboards in the background making everything even more disorienting. This is Zorn at his best. Fourth movement. Nothingness. "The Clavicle Of Solomon". Amid noises, glitches (I only recently learned that word), rattles, screeches, assorted insect sounds, video games, ambient keyboards, dwarves and dancers, nothing happens for nine minutes. It's partly a reprise of "Invocation", but even more minimal. But is it a fascinating, evocative nothingness? I wouldn't say so.

Fifth movement, "Lucifer Rising", entirely for voices and female choir. Obviously, given the overall mood, we're not exactly talking about the Antoniano choir here. A sad, catacomb-like choir is interrupted by a female voice whispering, satanic and sensual. The cheap effect is certainly there, but listening to it I couldn't help thinking of Alberto Sordi's parody of contemporary music at the Biennale in "Le Vacanze Intelligenti". Sixth movement, "Leviathan", three minutes of noise and screaming (Mike Patton?) without a break, a cacophonous wall in the Painkiller vein. I'm sure someone will get excited at the mere idea, but as far as I'm concerned Zorn could have spared us this radical-chic garbage for the brain-dead.

Seventh movement, "Mysteries", a continuation of the third, still dominated by the electric piano which, lazy, listless and abstract, with no gravitational center, carries us to the end of the CD in the best possible way.

Zorn is one who will endure. A hundred years from now, when people look back at the music made around the turn of the millennium, many musicians celebrated today will long since have been forgotten, while I'm sure Zorn will still be talked about. What's certain is that, in the present, I can't help but notice how he alternates between the sublime (the "Masada" series, for instance) and other work that is disconcerting or questionable, like this "IAO".

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30/10/2006