Six months in, and John Zorn is still on track for the unlikely goal of releasing an album a month during 2010. What did the second quarter produce? Three months. Three albums.
First off, in April he came out with "The Goddess: Music for the Ancient of Days", basically a companion piece to "In Search of the Miraculous", from the first quarter's batch. The same core of musicians are involved, it has the same feel of relaxed chamber jazz, perhaps there is a nod or two to the Vince Guaraldi Trio. (Not for the first time.) The difference this time around is that, as he so often does, Zorn seems to have thought to himself, what can I do to shake this up a bit?, and answered, I know, I'll bring in Marc Ribot. And, as is always the case, Ribot rises to the occasion by doing (a) exactly what Zorn tells him to and (b) whatever the heck he wants; sometimes both at the same time.
May's release was "Dictee / Liber Novus", a disc of two of Zorn's "modern composition" pieces. I think I have said before that I find this side of Zorn hard going. I can't really criticise (or "critique") it, because I don't really have the vocabulary. I just can't see myself coming back to it like I do with, say, his Masada repertoire. Nevertheless, there are some passages of gorgeous romantic lyricism tucked away in here, like little easter eggs hidden in a briar patch.
And speaking of Masada, it was about time we had another instalment in the Masada Book II: The Book of Angels series (wasn't it?), and in June Zorn obliged with "Baal", the fifteenth such instalment, played by the Ben Goldberg Quartet. Clarinet is the lead instrument here. The album starts off all bright and breezy, but heads off towards the abstract by the halfway mark. Once again the problem may lie with me: I tend to find the clarinet a touch wearing in large doses. However, if I put all of the Book of Angels discs into a playlist and shuffle them up, the tracks from this album feel right at home, so it clearly does what Zorn wants it to do; it just doesn't (quite) do what I would have liked it to.
So, if we are keeping score, I would think maybe one and two-thirds out of three would be about right this time round. But with more around the corner (including a new Masada String Trio disc -- woo-hoo), that is really more than enough to go on with.
