THE BOOK OF HEADS

Heavily experimental John Zorn album. He doesn't play there at all ( it is not rare in Zorn's albums), but the only musician is guitarist Marc Ribot.

So, it's a guitar sound album. Not guitar music, but guitar sound. John Zorn is a person, who initiated these heavy experiments with guitar sounds, and Marc Ribot is playing musician.

All album consists of 35 very short, often just some seconds long, recorded sound pieces. In rare moments it could be named as musical sounds, but more often it is just some sounds were taken from guitar by all possible ways.

If interesting in few moments as experiments with guitar sound, in it's bigger part the album is almost unlistenable.

For collectors and heavy fans only.

Review N' 206

John Zorn - The Book Of Heads

It's like some nice films. I watched it once. But I don't want to watch it twice.

Another album where John Zorn doesn't play anything. This album is another weird movement. I think Zorn used the "heads" to inspire the sick score of the album. 35 tracks played by Marc Ribot (guitar). First of all, you will have to understand what's happening. There's a lot of hidden techniques behind this work. Some of them: rubbing balloons on the guitar strings until they pop, holding talking dolls up to the microphone, pulling the guitar strings out of the bridge notch, hitting the strings with pencils, and playing with rice.

An intelligent album, but once more, there's only a few words to say about the Book of Heads. The album was made of very, VERY experimental and irregular tracks, without any electric instrument (I think so). It will be a valuable album for those like me, looking for different things. Not something to play again and again, though. Fans only.

I'm not the kind of reviewer who usually rates with half stars, but I say 2.5 stars for this album, actually.