LOCUS SOLUS

Review n° 205

John Zorn - Locus Solus

Rock? Maybe. But totally in opposition. (A briefly feeling after looking at an abstract painting).

Locus Solus is a nice example of Zorn's early musical anarchy. Scratching sounds, Saxophone distinctive noises, random tribal drums, non-musical structure, a bunch of spoken words out of the rhythm (well, there's no rhythm at all)... Everything to turn any conservative musician into a diehard hater of his works. The grindcore/jazzcore experiments are there, sometimes I found something like that in the middle of the album, out of nowhere.

An interesting point: there's 38 tracks in the album, and still are lacking words to describe this album in a single review. It's very hard to translate this album in words, this is totally anti music, frenetic and hell. Hard listening. Interesting album cover, though.

Even funny, this album is somehow skippable. You can find better avant-garde ideas or insanity in other Zorn albums.

Named after the 1914 French novel by Raymond Roussel, LOCUS SOLUS was one of JOHN ZORN's earliest recordings originally released in 1983 as a double album on the Rift label and then remastered and re-released on CD in 1991 on the Japanese late Eva in 1991 with several bonus tracks and then picked up again by ZORN's own Tzadik label and released a final time in 1995. As a seeker of adventurous musical experiences, i sniff out weirdness like dog treats but once in a while something so strange and so bizarre randomly falls into my lap that i have to sit back and go - whooooooooaaaaaahhhhhh! What did i just hear?

JOHN ZORN of course is well known for his avant-garde and frenetic free jazz workouts but LOCUS SOLUS is fairly weird even by ZORN's standards which means that those inured to only traditional forms of music will refer to this as pure noise and those who crave such wild manic music experiences will take them to the promised land of crazy unhinged sonic delight. The 68 minute run of pure mindf.u.ckery is roughly divided into four parts with different lineups. The bizarre nature of LOCUS SOLUS provided the blueprint of what would become the band Painkiller and after a listen to this it's obvious that Mike Patton was so enamored with this album that he adopted many of those weird spastic sounds in Mr Bungle and even borrowed the album title "Disco Volante" from one of the tracks.

This is one of those extreme avant-garde albums from ZORN with anarchic compositional structures, random electronic sounds, processed spoken word poetry, grindcore, freeform jazz saxophone squawks that sound like a coop of tortured chickens and excessive guitar noise. While the noise rock scene in Japan is considered ground zero for that kind of thing, it seems like LOCUS SOLUS is the epicenter that reverberated across the world. The first eight tracks feature Peter Blegvad on vocals although they are so processed and distorted that it sounds like a manic robot. There are several drummers on board with tribal drum parts as well as extreme metal bombast. Likewise there are turntable effects and wild array of other sounds ranging from whistling to clarinet solos and organ runs.

This is a very demanding album for sure as there is absolutely no recognizable forms of music to be heard. This is about as avant-garde and thinking outside of the box as you can imagine and all the more remarkable for its energetic prowess and that it was released as early as 1983 as it sounds like something that should've emerged in the mid-90s. The punk infused explosive tracks are succinct with most around the 2 minute mark or less but at over an hour's worth of this it is quite enervating. This is the stuff avant-garde dreams are made of but for those not accustomed to this degree of musical freedom, this will come off as jarring and completely startling. Not for everyone but i totally dig this twisted unapologetic noise-fest.