Tzadik
2006
Moonchild
About This Album
Let's take away John Zorn's ecstatic -- some would say diarrheic -- hyperbole in the sleeve notes for a bit and look at the trio here: vocalist Mike Patton, drummer Joey Baron, and bassist Trevor Dunn. Given their individual and collective résumés, the possibilities are nearly endless. These three offer Moonchild, Zorn's "contemporary song cycle," the feel of something that for the most part doesn't quite feel like song in any way we currently recognize -- even in hardcore punk and metal genres which this set gets its inspiration from -- but it's far more than mere improvisation. In his notes Zorn claims to have been "combining the hypnotic intensity of ritual (composition) the spontaneity of magick (improvisation) and in a modern musical format (rock)." Good enough, but what it seems like in a simplistic sense is that he's interested in the power dynamic of rock to change certain elements of both. And changed they are. He claims his spiritual inspiration from the mad genius of French letters in the early 20th century, Antonin Artaud, magician and proto "new age" theorist Aleister Crowley, and the brilliant vanguard composer Edgard Varèse.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4 and 8)

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