Wonderful, original, music. This is a beautiful work. The Bar Kokhba sextet plays Zorn's music wonderfully. Zorn's compositions on this album are great and interesting. Completely original. Traditional Jewish music meets surf rock meets contemporary jazz. Very cool.
Bar Kokhba's "Lucifer" Bar Kokhba's "Lucifer" balances musical traditions from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic klezmer styles with latin, surf, and world music. A choice selection of ten tracks from John Zorn's prolific portfolio of over three-hundred compositions for Masada Book Two: The Book of Angels. These tunes all reference a name from the spiritual study of angelology. Personal favourites from the tenth edition in this Tzadik series includes "Zazel", "Gediel", "Rahal", "Azbugah", and "Abdiel". Bar Kokhba play intimate chamber music that illustrates a beautiful collage of contrast and creativity; delicate and diverse music expressed with eloquence and elegance.
Yet another stunning release in the 'Book of Angels'. 2008 has been an embarrassment of riches for John Zorn fans, with pretty much everything Zorn has put out thus far this year being of stunningly high quality-- both Film Works, Vol. 19: The Rain Horse and The Dreamers are superb records, and likewise "Lucifer", the latest entry in Zorn's Masada Book II: The Book of Angels is no exception. Performed by his Bar Kokhba sextet-- the Masada String Trio (violinist Mark Feldman, cellist Erik Friedlander and bassist Greg Cohen) augmented by guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Joy Baron and percussionist Cyro Bapista, Zorn presents ten new Masada compositions.
Zorn's stated goal with the new Masada songbook was not to make a band the focus of the project but rather the music and in this he really succeeds-- covering a range of moods and influences while being both uniquely Jewish and uniquely John Zorn (and readily identifiable as Masada). I haven't really touched on this much in discussing the other Book of Angels records, but the level of diversity of this material is fairly staggering, and this volume is just another illustration of this.
The album hits the ground running-- opener "Sother" splits the theme between pizzicato strings and arco ones supporting guitar. But Masada is less about themes and more about being a springboard for improvisation like any great jazz composition and we get there fast-- Feldman takes an extended, powerful, and fierce solo, completely on fire and nudged along by Ribot. And really, these are the keys to what makes this record fantastic-- great playing and great support as a band whose level of interaction is a mix between near psychic response and Zorn's unique exertions over them (everything from switching accompaniment from arco to pizzicato to not at all to conducting triangle strikes and extending brilliant solos). The disc provides some great moments of sound and contrast, recalling old western themes ("Zazel"), high cinematic drama ("Mehalalel") and a playfulness not often found on Zorn records until recently (the sing-song "Azbugah", which evolves quickly into a brush feature for Baron, who creates a gentle, playful and understatedly brilliant performance). Along the way, we get a series of staggering performances on all instruments, although Feldman seems to steal the show pretty much consistently-- from his frantic performances on the opener and closer ("Abdiel") to his Nashville strains on "Rahal". The only real exception being Ribot's blues-drenched feature "Zechriel", where he digs deep and finds some of his more powerful blues exertions with Zorn swirling the band around him.
I originally started writing reviews on Amazon because I was frustrated with the glowing fanboy commentary that every album that was released seemed to get, but really, there's been nothing but great things to say about Zorn's most recent output, and "Lucifer" is no exception. Highly recommended.
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