SIX LITANIES FOR HELIOGABALUS

Despite the strong prominence of vocals, and the purely vocal track "Litany IV", I wouldn't hesitate to describe this as an instrumental album. Besides some chanting of "Heliogabalus" by the female choir, I don't believe a single word is spoken throughout. If you would have any doubt about the validity of calling vocals an instrument, Six Litanies will be the album to convince you. The whispers and chants of the female choir offer a perfect backdrop and provide much of the romantic atmosphere of the album throughout the chaos of the musicians playing. Mike Patton contributes a variety of squeaks, squeals, snorts, and breathing that will amaze you firstly for how inhuman they are. They'll amaze you even more so once you begin to appreciate the great care with which they are placed in the tracks. Honestly, anyone could hire a lunatic to scream randomly throughout an album for weirdness' sake, but their placement and use in the selections speaks volumes of Zorn's compositional ability. Most enjoyable are the great trade-offs and unison lines of Patton's high pitched shrieks and Zorn's trademark sax.

The brutality and technicality of Dunn/Baron duo can be compared to Meshuggah. Combined with the insanity of Zorn and Patton, Six Litanies hardly makes for an accessible record. The album is heavy and quite impenetrable at first. However, it's certainly one of Zorn's finest releases making it also one of the finest releases of its time.

Six Litanies is comprised chiefly of haunting neo-classical, clashing with brutal metal, and insane vocal work. To be fair, there's a great deal of electronic music, and free jazz, of course, but the classical and metal are arguably at the forefront. I feel terrible calling these loud sections metal: but that's probably the easiest thing to do. It's really just heavy sections, played with lots of distortion, and rhythmic complexity, though not exactly metal. For the remainder of this review, when I use the term metal, all I'm referring to is a high point on the volume scale.

The vocal work has but three gears. One is extremely intrusive, and is typically in the spotlight here. The fourth track, aptly named Litany IV, is an eight minute opus of extraordinary complexity. It is so incredibly complex it sounds improvised, which it likely is to a small degree. However, a great deal of it is tightly composed, since Mike Patton performs it nearly the same during live performances. The second gear is nearly inaudible, where Mike and a troupe of female vocalists simply make sounds of soft laughter or haunting humming. An angelic chorus, the avatar of this album, is sung in this gear. The most obvious use of the second gear is during the second track, where giggling hovers over soft, keyboard led playing. The third gear is completely off, when the instruments take centerstage. Throughout the entire album, the only distinguishable word is, Heliogabalus. Besides that, all vocal work is entirely wordless.

The metal sections are actually quite interesting. There is, of course, a rhythmic emphasis from Joey Baron on drums, and Trevor Dunn on bass, but they are sometimes quite rudely interrupted by a hailing of squealing sax and vocal squealing from Patton. But both aspects always have a very musical quality, and sound great. I always found that avant-garde music perceives music on a very honest and very human level. Like visual art, there is no universal goal other than creating something that is pleasing to the eyes. Sure, there are rules of art that can be followed or disregarded, but in the end, all that matters is the glee that your pupils experience. The same goes for music: often the arrangements are precise, and following set rules, but very often, Zorn forgets all that and merely generates what notes would please the inner ear the most.

If you've got a lot of friends interested in more mainstream music, then I strongly suggest getting this album merely to scare the [&*!#] out of them. Even if you don't expect to ever develop an appreciation for this experimental genre of sound, you will be guaranteed to win every, Who has the weirdest song on their iPod, contest. Trust me: many friends have claimed to have found the most bizarre band ever, only to have me violently stick my phones in their ears and play any song on this album, and utter, You win.

Choir and organ sometimes threaten to transform the music to something beautiful, and even succeed on occasion. But fear not! The ravaging lows from the rhythm section and the piercing highs from the vocals and saxes destroy their progress in a mere second. And after defeating the beauty that briefly appeared, the rhythm section and the voices scuffle for spotlight. In this sense, Six Litanies is a perpetual battle between three factions. I must admit, I thought myself very experienced when it came to enjoying avant-garde music, but this album took much time for me to appreciate. But once it did, I loved it to an extreme degree. I proudly proclaim this a masterpiece of modern music, and my personal favourite of 2007. Zorn manages to force chaos and beauty to co-exist, to merge, to fight, to oppose, and to match. All six tracks are excellently loose and aggressive, and are similarly beautiful and haunting.

If you don't know what a litany is, there's no shame in that. I didn't either when I first picked up John Zorn's Six Litanies for Heliogabalus. Finally, though, I cracked open my dictionary and discovered that litany has two meanings:

1. a prayer consisting of a series of supplications and responses said alternately by a leader and a group. 2. a lengthy recitation

Both are helpful in understanding John Zorn's Six Litanies for Heliogabalus. The entire CD is structured as a series of calls and responses between the abrasive, heavy drum-bass-vocal trio of, respectively, Joey Baron, Trevor Dunn, and Mike Patton (you might recognize the latter two from Mr. Bungle) and soothing organ and choir dominated sections. Even on a smaller scale, though, this call-and-response format applies, such as at the end of "Litany I," where Mike Patton on vocals and John Zorn on saxophone trade off, Patton babbling (as usual), followed by John Zorn make his sound like a very musical cat in its death throes. The second definition applies specifically to "Litany IV," a purely vocal piece where we are treated to what indeed is "a lengthy recitation" courtesy of Mike Patton.

This still doesn't explain what Six Litanies for Heliogabalus sounds like, however. Six Litanies is a continuation of, a departure from, and an improvement on John Zorn's Moonchild and Astronome CDs. Like those two, Six Litanies features Baron, Dunn, and Patton, but Six Litanies works from a far more varied palette than just those three (who were the sole performers on Moonchild and Astronome). Six Litanies also includes jazzy organ, a beautiful female choir, John Zorn's own saxophone, and Ikue Mori's famous electronics.

This is the key reason why Six Litanies for Heliogabalus is an improvement on Moonchild and Astronome. Those CDs were amazing when chugging full throttle (as Six Litanies often does), but they had softer sections that felt a bit too much like noodling, and which occasionally failed to engage the listener. On Six Litanies, these sections are absent, instead replaced by the organ, choir, and electronics sections, which are atmospheric, beautiful, and above all captivating. Not only do they provide a needed break from the otherwise non-stop action, the keep the listener actively engaged, and they stand up in their own right, not just in context.

And, of course, I still haven't explained what this CD sounds like, except perhaps for the choir sections. In the bass, drum, and vocal dominated sections, the drum and bass hold down an ever shifting groove while Patton wails maniacally over the top. It's almost impossible to tell that only a bass is used, as it covers a wide range (including a tremendous amount of distortion). All of these sections are challenging and avant-garde - Zorn isn't the founder of extreme avant-garde for nothing - but because it is groove based (and because of the choir sections), Six Litanies actually contains quite a few hooks.

The only fault with Six Litanies for Heliogabalus is that Patton's vocals can get in the way of the music at times (this is rare, but it does happen a few times), though his solo piece is awesome, particularly where he imitates themes from the first three litanies solely with his voice. On the whole, Patton's vocals are amazing, but I feel that if Zorn were to take the format established here but use saxophone exclusively (no vocals), or at least make the saxophone more dominant and the vocals less so, I feel he could produce his best CD. Until then, that honor belongs to Naked City, with Six Litanies a not-so-distant third (Spillane tops it by a hair, but isn't as good as Naked City). A masterpiece, recommended to anyone with an adventurous ear. Among the best CDs released in 2007.

Moonlight Trio is one of the most current John Zorn's project, and even from participating musicians line-up you can expect this project isn't so pleasant and easy listening, as Masada or The Dreamers. Mark Patton on vocals, Trevor Dunn on bass and Joey Baron on drums don't sound as very safe team of musicians, and guests are all the same - radical electronics artist Ikue Mori and Zorn himself, playing hard core free jazz attacking sax, between others.

Album's music than is what you expected - uncontrolled genius' madness. Possibly last time John's music sounded similar on Naked City releases, but there it was mostly punkish avant hard core. There, played by Moonchild trio, the music is eclectic mix of free jazz, brutal rhythms (rare example when even zeuhl influences could be recognised in Zorn's music), radical avant noise, screaming vocals (or just screams), some soundtracks themes, downtown atmosphere - and all mixed in one very theatrical brew!

If you're in mellow well-structured pleasant and comfortable prog for burgers, better leave this album where it is. If you're not very tolerant in what you're listen, and think Bjork music is extremal and almost extremist, better run from this album away. Believe me, most radical Bjork's screams sound as Moon Safari (nowadays Take That) comparing with "Six Litanies...".

This music will wake you up, will push your blood to circulate faster and your brains to work harder. Great album for those who is ready to listen to it!

Well, think again. This gut-punching album from John Zorn's Moonchild Trio will completely ruin any associations the word might have shared with Peter Sinfield's benevolent hippie whimsy. The '07 effort marks only my third pit-stop along an unguided, arbitrary weeklong tour through a truly intimidating discography (numbering over 400 albums as a composer and/or collaborator), and it feels like my itinerary was hijacked at gunpoint by a raving maniac with a Mensa IQ.

Of course trying to pin down the music of John Zorn will always be like trying to capture lightning in a bottle: a futile exercise that usually results in shattered glass and third-degree burns. Especially when such an eclectic artist is indulging his more hardcore inclinations, and they don't get much harder (or eclectic) than this.

Here's the man himself, quoted on the back cover of the CD (the emphasis is his): "POWERFUL SECRETS are revealed through INTENSITY and EXTREMITIES of experience". Boy, was he ever not kidding. This project makes even the outer limits of The Mars Volta sound like The Moody Blues...

The original trio (bass guitar, drums and vocals) was expanded here to a sextet, with an additional three-voice female choir adding depth and nuance to a distorted soundstage (Zorn himself, wrestling a demented saxophone, is only a guest at his own party). And the music itself might be described as pyrotechnic modern-art thrash-metal, with the spark in the gunpowder provided by vocalist Mike Patton, a familiar name to fans of the similar but much tamer Avant-Prog Metal ensemble MR. BUNGLE. Listen in amazement while he snorts, gags, coughs up a lungful of bloody phlegm, screams, gasps for breath, and at one point hawks his throat and expectorates all over the studio microphone.

It's an astonishing performance, but don't call it singing. Patton begins at a point where even Damo Suzuki might have hesitated ("Peking O", anyone?), and then leaps headlong into an exhilarating performance-art freefall. If your tolerance for unhinged guttural gymnastics is limited (and no one would blame you, if so), be advised to skip "Litany IV" altogether, which is entirely Patton, unaccompanied for eight alarming minutes and sounding not unlike the old Loony Tunes Tasmanian Devil in the middle of an existential crisis.

A few islands of relative sanity can be found within the roiling oceans of chaos: a groovy Neo-Krautrock organ jam in "Litany II" (shades of ELECTRIC ORANGE), and several interludes of ghostly pagan atmospherics, not inappropriate for an album named after a decadent 3rd century Roman Emperor. And a musicologist might be able to further dissect the mayhem with a clean intellectual scalpel. But doing so would kill the patient, and miss half the fun. The album isn't a thesis project: it's a musical judo exhibition, and that grey area between your ears is the block of wood waiting to be split in two by a well-timed kick.

This is what I consider the best of the Moonchild Trio albums; "Six Litanies for Heliogabalus". These six kaleidoscopic tracks make up some of the most dynamic music out there, ranging from frantic bits of screaming and loud chaos to soft and almost sensual passages within each track. The thing that makes this one the best of the projects in their discography is that it is the most dynamic and variant of all of them.

You probably already know that Mike Patton can do amazing things with his voice and that there simply is no match for his vocalizations, same as you know that he and Trevor Dunn worked together in Mr. Bungle, and that Dunn's bass is some of the most amazing bass put on record anywhere, and that is proven here on this album over and over again. But Joey Baron, who has worked in another project called Electric Masada also along with Dunn is probably the least known of the three, but with his crazy drumming skills, he should be on a level with the other two.

Besides those three, on this album, Zorn plays the sax like a madman, and at times even can make you think they have captured a frantic squealing pig, that Patton is trying to mimic that pig as they torture it with an onslaught of pounding bass, and, of course, the excellent swashes of organ by Jamie Saft and further electronics of Ikue Mori. Add three other vocalists (Martha Cluver, Abby Fishcer, and Kirsten Soller) that come in with choir parts and other sounds, and you have the best and most concise of the Moonchild Trio albums.

Yes there are plenty of outbursts of mayhem and chaos, as you would expect, but in this case, there are also plenty of contrasts to that too. The harmonies done by the 3 other singers give you a feeling of peace and tranquility, yet underlying their sound is a feeling of unease, and when Zorn adds his sax to the choir with the twinkling of dissonant electronics and Patton's heavy breathing, (I'm talking about "Litany Pt. 3" specifically here), the unease just can't be denied. But get ready, Patton is about to let out the most hair-raising scream you've probably ever heard, and then the music melts into a heavy rock cavalcade of organ, wild bass and frantic drums in an amazing instrumental showcase. This is just an example of what to expect here, the most unpredictable music most people will ever hear, and most of them probably won't tolerate it.

The question is, are you prepared for this? I'll tell you now, you have never heard anyone scat like Patton does at the beginning of Pt. 4. The man is crazy. It you are curious and ready for anything, this is the album to hear out of all of their albums. Easily their best as a trio, and one of the best of any output by any of them. Notice I say one of the best as each one of them have had some amazing albums. Just know that this is avant-garde craziness. You'll laugh, cry, and run away in a panic at Patton's antics, but the fact that everyone else involved is just as amazing will either make your head explode or your speakers melt, and now we've come around full circle, the question is, are you ready for this?