Customer Reviews

Spy Vs Spy

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's been a while since I listened intensely to Zorn--used to listen a lot to albums like _Spillane_ but have been less excited by them than before. However, I just dug out _Spy Vs Spy_ again, & think it remains a fine disc. Thrashy, ultra-loud, ultra-fast versions of Ornette Coleman tunes...sounds like it should be a travesty, but it actually works phenomenally well. The album is split into two halves (the original A and B sides): the first consists of the bluntest & fastest renditions of tunes, each about one to two minutes in length. A highlight is "Chippie"--if you listen carefully at the end of the cut after the smoke clears you can hear someone breathe a sigh of relief! It's intense & funny--Joey Baron & Michael Vatcher pounding away, Mark Dresser calmly doing his thing, Tim Berne & John Zorn squalling madly. Part two (side B) has more varied & considered interpretations (some as long as 5 minutes), which often move farther from the source material. I recommend "Ecars", a terrifically swinging rendition of a tune Ornette recorded for _Ornette on Tenor_; and the final "Mob Job", which Zorn turns into a yearning, pained and painful blues, is a stunning conclusion.

The avant-garde jazz movements have their share of detractors, and they have their share of fanatics. And to many in the latter category, touching this music in a fashion other than originally intended is often akin to the greatest acts of travisty-- loving music that is so decidingly unpopular tends to have the effect of defensiveness-- as a result, its often the case that anyone who covers a piece from the avant-garde without doing a reading in a similar form often comes under harsh criticism from both the fanatics and the detractors-- even when Ornette Coleman got his band plugged in and changed some elements of his style, he came under harsh criticism. I suppose its often the case that its only acceptable to be different in the right ways.

It is, of course, in this context that John Zorn has recorded an album that is universally unpopular on both sides of the fence and unfairly criticisized for its most overt elements. Zorn (on alto sax), with support from Tim Berne (also alto sax), Mark Dresser (bass), Joey Baron (drums) and Michael Vatcher (drums) put together an album of Ornette Coleman songs-- often played in a proto-Naked City hardcore "thrash jazz" style-- at least on the first half of the album, the second side is a different story altogether, and any criticism of this as an album of all the same breakneck hardcore thrash jazz shows the record was not listened to all the way through.

Zorn was heavily influenced by hardcore bands and apparanetly saw no reason to keep this idiom separate from jazz (and later he'd let his take of his critics known on the sublimely titled Naked City track, "Jazz Snob- Eat S***").

So quite a bit on this record is aggressive, and angry, and relentless ("Good Old Days"), but there's a lot more to it than that, a lot of contrast can be made in the sing-song theme statements vs. the cartoon/hardcore influenced solos ("Blues Connotation"), and while the record has been criticized as a screech fest, it is more often the case that one or both sax players will play melodic lines ("Rejoicing", "C&D"), and it does pre-sage both Naked City and Masada to some degree-- check out the dual soloing throughout on pieces like "The Disguise".

The second side is a different story altogether, although somewhat muddy in its sound (the first side is too, but it seems less important), we get some great riffing and fantastic, swinging playing-- check out "Ecars", "Feet Music", or one of my favorites, the stunning "Broadway Blues" take. Its still pretty outside, but I think its a lot easier to deal with than the first side.

Truth to be told, what I really think is that the album is in severe need of remastering-- the sound is muddy and the mix is kind of odd, and this definitely detracts from the album, but nonetheless, its a great record. Recommended.

Ornette Coleman's music is such an enigma because of its inability to fit to any one style of music...or because of its amorphous nature that lets it connect to so many other styles of music. This disc takes some acclimation, but its severe bombasity (even in the 'slower' tracks of the second half) is rewarding if your ears can live through the initial assault.

But that IS John Zorn's way, isn't it? At least in some of these early recordings...he slaps you upside the head with quick changes and Napalm Death speed and an onslaught that he used to carpet bomb himself an area of music that he could then go back to and refine a little. In the end, I think Zorn overevolved a bit and became a dinosaur whose carapace was too thorny to lift, but these earlier recordings have an intense sense of exploration about them, of wanting to find out where he could go and, I think, how far up the wall he could drive others.

And all this is why Coleman's music is so fitting to this spirit. Ornette Coleman has branched out his own music into multimedia explorations and different combinations, including orchestra. But it took Zorn to bring this music into a mosh pit to ironically bring out the baroque elements of the music--the precision of the cascades and the sudden, but fitting endings. This disc is worth a few listens, even if those around you are cursing their names under their breath.

Zorn's take on Ornette's music misses much of the subtle qualities. This is fast, hardcore, punk rock interpretations of Coleman's music, rather than a "tribute". While the players are extremely talented (Zorn is an eclectic, knowledgeable player and theorist), the dynamics here are very few; most songs are taken at around 300-to-the-quarter, and the solos consist of little more than biting the reed and honking, rather than mixing it up as, say, Pharoah Sanders might.

I should also add that Charlie Haden, in a jazz magazine interview, heard this album and thought it was noisy, that the players had little idea of what Ornette's music was about, and that they seemed to thrive on violence and volume, which is as far away as you can get from Harmolodics.

Still, a curious listen.

Cover versions of Ornette Coleman compositions usually entail a safe rehashing of the tune "Lonely Woman". Zorn's Coleman tribute stays true to the spirit of the original work and still manages to successfully present a drastic new perspective. The group, two saxes and two drummers, roars through the tunes at an exhilaratingly fast tempo. The percussion is driven and frantic, owing much to Zorn's love for Hardcore bands like Napalm Death. The result is a powerful, inspired session. Essentially, Zorn has taken the tunes apart, carried them into another musical style, and put them back together again. The result is a welcome statement about a body of work that still remains largely in a vaccuum.

A recording that's more "interesting" than enjoyable or moving, more agenda/theory driven than ear/heart driven.Much could be said both for and against this,but after over a century the moves and counter-moves of musical avant-gardes and their detractors of the moment are so predictable and stylized on both sides as to be tedious and pointless.

Some good things.The two altoists know their instruments and are masters of an admirable range of effects those instruments can be made to produce. Ornette's writing is strong enough to at least partly overcome versions of it which are not much interested in either its letter or its spirit. There are moments when the horns catch the sonorities of OC's early days wonderfully well. And in the final four or five selections, when the horn players don't step on each other's toes quite so much and the aggressive sonic assault from the drums quiets down a little bit, there's some playing which I enjoyed. Those in a position to know tell me that the violent, high-volume/high-speed,indecipherably dense sound environment of most of the album comes mostly from a certain kind of rock, and if that's so then perhaps fans of that sort of thing might find here an entry into jazz.

But for the most part this struck me as undifferentiated roaring and squalling overlain with unceasing wrath-of-Jehovah drum clatter.Not shocking, transgressive, or upsetting, but just boring,reminding me of the sort of complete dead end which Coltrane found himself in the year or two before he died. I know there are other points of view on this, but to my ear music is boring when it doesn't,in some way and at some level,involve the making and breaking of sound patterns in turn.Without some initial pattern--it doesn't have to be a pattern present in the piece itself--the absence of pattern has no force.You're left with the sort of complexity-issuing-in-monotony of a conversation in which everyone is talking at once,or, better, the steady hum that comes off a crowd. But if you find yourself stimulated or at least profitably challenged by someone screaming the same things in your face over and over, you may well find something here worth your while. One piece of good advice to prospective buyers: unless money is no problem, arrange to hear some of this CD before you buy it. If it still pleases or intrigues you after that,purchase with confidence! And if you really do enjoy this music,more power to you--after all,there's a lot of jazz that I love to listen to which seems to others to be "just chaotic noise"...

This album is simply audio caffeine! If you play this album on your way to work, or while you're getting dressed, you will have no need for any coffee.
If you looking for the album that gives you the most notes per dollar, you have found the bargain you seek. If you want to laugh because musicians are playing with such insanity that it's funny, prepare to be highly amused. I have no idea what the original pieces sound like, but it hardly matters. This album is its own thing. They could be playing any tune like this, and it would still be intense and amazing.

Dude, this is jazz for metalheads, which is why I love it. Having recently yearned for aggression in other forms, I have discovered the powerful majesty of Coltranes' later recordings, and upon studying up on the "avant-garde" jazz scene of the 60's, the name Ornette Coleman obviously comes up time and again....and to hear his works through the John Zorn filter is a thrashin good time. Recommended for those who wonder what Napalm Death would sound like as an instrumental jazz unit...a small group indeed, but one I count myself in.

I absolutely adore this album. Of all the works in the John Zorn catalog, these treatments of Ornette Coleman's work really stands out. This album is jam packed with raw energy and pulsing exhilaration that in many ways reminds me more of punk rock than what most people think of when they talk about "jazz."

My only criticism of this album is that a little bit goes a long way.

3 1/2


Though its weaponry can occasionally become redundant make no mistake, this is measured musical meth.