THE BIG GUNDOWN: JOHN ZORN PLAYS THE MUSIC OF ENNIO MORRICONE

John Zorn is great experimentalist, his music varies from beautiful to interesting to inaccessible. But he is almost never boring. The Big Gundown is his first great album, and the successful basic for all the range of future "movie" serie works.

As it is stated in album name, Zorn recorded his tribute to great music soundtracks by Ennio Morricone. It means, that quite often you will be able to catch, what movie's soundtrack was taken as raw material for one or another composition.

But it is John Zorn, so all pieces are heavily reworked. Zorn uses different teams of musicians for each track, Bill Frisell and Fred Frith are between them. The music is very eclectic mix of some original movie sound from 60-70-ss, neoclassic minimalism, free jazz techniques, avant-noise inclusions, heavy-rock and blues moments as well. Some songs have vocals ( Tre Nel 5000 contains Diamanda Galas singing, and you will feel it at the very first moment!).

All in all album is a hot dish: some pieces are excellent, some noises are terrible, some sounds are out of place, and nothing is in balance, but just chaotically mixed. But all this build very strange and in it's own manner beautiful atmosphere, when you don't need to see movie to listen this soundtracks. They are kind of art by itself.

I agree, that this album is still raw in many places, but it is first really successful result of Zorn's "movie" eclectics, and it gave the roots to big green three of Zorn's most successful experimentations in future.