Customer Reviews

Cartoon S&M

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1999 and 2000, John Zorn went to the Netherlands to record some of his best chamber music with a foreign orchestra. The result is this double-disc album. It's arranged in two parts: The cartoon disc and the S&M disc. But the material on both discs is almost interchangeable --- Zorn tends to blend his influences, even when he's trying to keep them apart. (And the violence in cartoons is nearly sadomasochistic, anyway, which gives him a head start.)

The cartoon disc is inspired by one of Zorn's heroes, Carl Stalling, the guy who wrote and conducted the music for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons. Zorn's version of Stalling's music was written for imaginary, more adult cartoons. The three songs on this disc have three different arrangements. One is a full orchestra (For Your Eyes Only). It's loud and fast. The second, Cat O'Nine Tails, is for string quartet. It's just as fast, with sharp cuts between blocks of music. The third, Carny, is for solo piano. It re-creates the tone of the first two, but without the luxury of multiple instruments. It's also the best track on the disc.

The second disc has three moody S&M pieces. They could be the soundtracks to a couple of avant-garde erotic films. In The Dead Man (indexed on the CD into thirteen blocks for some reason), the musicians explore brief melodies, sound effects, and single tones. The piece is very abstract. Music for Children follows the same theme. It begins as music and ends with violent cracks and snaps. There's a sound of splintering wood in there, too. The third piece, Memento Mori, is very challenging --- for 26 minutes, a string quartet plays one block of music after another, each stretched out and subtle, with no repeating melodies. The piece grows on you, but only if you listen intently about ten times.

Both discs have a bonus track: Two versions of Kol Nidre, a ceremonial klezmer song that John Zorn wrote to evoke Jewish religious rites. On one disc, the song is played by a clarinet quartet. On the other, it's played by a string quartet. Although Kol Nidre doesn't fit the cartoon S&M theme, the song is a perfect coda.

This isn't a good place to start if you haven't heard John Zorn's music. But if you've had a taste of his work --- or if you like any kind of avant-garde classical music --- you should hear this. There's a lot of music here, so you'll have to listen over and over to get it all. But the effort is worth it.

This bizarre double disc reiterates the fact deconstructionist Zorn is most comfortable playing into his own audience. For starters it seems clear that the recordings are available on other (arguably better) discs, and for finishers I cannot help but feel reworking these compositions into this two-disc release seems pretentious at best. Everyone should embrace their inner schizophrenic Zorn, but only few die-hards actually need to embrace this much. Amongst his "studies" into these sporadic, atonal, stringed freak-outs, the challenged-out composer offers seldom few hard reasons to stay musically invested inside these post-classical alienations. The longer compositions only are slightly more involving from their extended run time- Zorn's complete annihilation of melody and rhythm for more then a few seconds pervade both cartoon and s&m. To help clear the mind disc-to-disc, he has attached one of his slower, introspective compositions in different forms, a nice gimmick, but still no reason to invest in the experience outside of being a completionist. Still, as compositionally fractured as it all is, one can never accuse Zorn of hiring insensitive players to do his bidding, playing here with a ferocity as dazzling as it is confusing.

John Zorn's "Cartoon S&M" is a collection of eight chamber ensemble performances, broken into two distinct sections (and cleverly two CDs). All of the material had previously been released on other albums, but these are all new recordings.

The first disc consists of music overtly influenced by Carl Stalling-- "Cartoon" music so to speak. The three pieces presented in this form-- "Cat O'Nine Tails" for string quartet, "Carny" for solo piano, and "For Your Eyes Only" for 20-piece orchestra, are all similar in form-- blocks of related, unrelated or bizarrely consistent music are arranged together in a continuous sequence of consistently changing mood and texture-- from swing to neo-Baroque to frantic energy music, cartoonish bursts, sensitive passages, etc. It moves and consistently keeps moving. Of the three, "Cat O'Nine Tails" gets the best reading (by the Mondriann Quartet)-- enormously sensitive and in-tune with the intent of the piece, although solo piano workout "Carny" (handled expertly by Tomoko Mukiyama) is my favorite of the three. Admittedly, this reading is in my assessment inferior to Stephen Drury's rather brilliant reading on "Angelus Novus", but nonetheless, it is an amazing piece. As a coda, one of Zorn's most fragile and beautiful pieces, "Kol Nidre" is presented. Performed as a string quartet (again by the Mondriann quartet), they again find a lovely and sensitive atmosphere and infuse one of zorn's most mournful composition with a stunning power. It may not be superior to the reading on "The String Quartets", but it certainly is comparable.

The second disc is grouped as "S&M", but honestly, i don't hear it. Two string quartets-- "The Dead Man" and "Memento Mori" (both previously recorded for "The String Quartets") and a violin/piano/percussion trio piece ("Music for Children") are presented and are quite similar to the material on the first disc, except the moods tend to stay darker. Both string quartets are again perforemd by the Mondriann Quartet and receive fine readings-- "Memento Mori" in particular seems to benefit from this reading. While it may be one of the most challenging listens in Zorn's catalog, a slightly more open and seemingly confident performance allows it to really shine as a thing of bizarre and delicate beauty. "The Dead Man" and "Music For Children" I found, in both cases, somewhat lesser than previous issues (on "The String Quartets" and "Music For Children" respectively)-- neither are bad listens per se (although "Music for Children" is presented in a hushed, hard to hear, tone), but I feel both had superior readings previously. Like the first disc, this one closes with a presentation of "Kol Nidre", this time scored for four clarinets. Again, the unnerving beauty of the piece shines forth, though truthfully I prefer the string version, both are stunning.

There is clasical work by Zorn which I prefer to "Cartoon S/M", but it does make a good sort of summary of his work prior to 2000. Those seeking an entry into Zorn's classical work could do worse than to start here.

As I have said in other reviews, I am not an uncritical fan of Zorn's concert music. I find him intermittently brilliant or archly referential depending on the piece. He is undeniably facile as a composer. The ideas seem to pour out of him. It's just that so often the ideas are not really his.

This 2CD set is a case in point. Some of the works on it are really brilliant, and some are just annoying. The name of the CD says it all really. Music on the first disc is mostly inspired by Zorn's fascination with the cartoon music of Chuck Stallings or Tex Avery. As a result, on pieces like Cat 'o Nine Tails and Carny the ideas fly fast a furious, but with no significant development. What is humorous and wacky in Zorn's Naked City albums, ends up sounding pretentious in these pieces. And then there are bleeding chunks of everything from Tex Ritter to Varese thrown in. Quotation is not necessarily a bad thing in concert music, but you really have to have something new to say about the work you are quoting. Berio did this in the masterful third movement of his Sinfonia, summing up the progression of western history through brilliant commentary on an entire movement from Mahler. Zorn is just showing off here. We learn nothing new about the works quoted, or about Zorn. It comes off as pastiche. There are lovely moments in these works...but they are dropped. It's like listening to musings of a composer with ADD!

On the other hand, some of the works here are wonderful, particularly on the second CD, S & M, though I am also partial to the chamber orchestra piece, For Your Eyes Only. (Seems to hang together betterl than the other cartoon material.) The second CD starts with The Dead Man, which is a structurally sound piece in small movements (ostensibly representing the sound track to an imagined S and M movie.) Though even in this piece, there is some Mickey Moused moments, it hangs together well and makes a statement of a sort. The rest of the second CD is uniformly good. Music for Children is a serious piece. In it, Zorn shows an uncanny ear for sound combinations, microtones and well constructed barrages of atonal runs. The work has an improvisatory quality, while still maintaining directionality. Memento Mori is perhaps the most serious work in the collection and my favorite Zorn string quartet. It is a long work in an unashmedly modernist style. At times it is reminicent of the work of Boulez or Stockhausen. At other times, is resembles Crumb. This is a great work and worthy of the price of the disc alone (though you can get this in other guises, by the Kronos Quartet or on Zorn's own label Tzadik.)

Finally, my two favorite pieces on the CD are the two versions of Kol Nidre. This work is an homage to Arvo Part and late Beethoven. In fact, the opening and closing of the work could be lifted directly from Part's Fratres. However, the middle section is a soulful Klezmer style melody that seems closer to Zorn's real soul than anything else on the CD. This rediscovery of his Jewish identity is to me, the best thing that Zorn has done in his career. Long after his S and M pieces fade away, and the cartoon stuff looses it's meaning, the music of Kol Nidre, along with his Masada quartet and Bar Kolkba will remain fresh and deeply personal.

The performances on these discs are outstanding, even in the most cartoonish material. The Dutch groups represented on the disc play with conviction and good modernist sensibilities. Though there is a lot of competition for particularly the string quartet material, the Mondrian quartet holds up very well next to the competition.

So now to the reccommendation...I only gave three stars. On the basis of the strongest pieces I would give five...but there are alot of weak pieces on this CD so I had to take some stars off my rating. If you have heard some of Zorn's cartoon music and you like it, then add the two stars back and get this CD. Otherwise, you may want to see if you can find other versions of Memento Mori, Music for Children and Kol Nidre. They are, in my opinion, the works to savor from this collection.