MEMORIA (WITH BILL LASWELL)

Art and music, two crucial concepts in the life of ordinary people like us, but most important, to iconic people like John Zorn and Bill Laswell, two amazing, crazy and experimental artists who have been exploding their creativity for ages, mostly in the jazz, experimental and prog scene. This time, they decided to release an album in which they could pay hommage to three musicians who have passed away, but whose legacy has prevailed and will prevail for so many years: saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Wayne Shorter, and percussionist Milford Graves.

Those musicians have left a strong legacy in the jazz scene (mainly), and this album entitled 'Memoria' gives us a clear message: they will forever live in our memory. Zorn and Laswell were lucky enough to collaborate with them, so in fact they were not only colleagues, but also friends, and I believe it is a precious detail this duo decided to release this album in a heartfelt way, knowing the late musicians recently left this planet (Graves 2021, Sanders 2022, Shorter 2023).

In this 3-song album we will find a quite interesting show where Zorn's saxophone and Laswell's bass do the talking. First they delight us with 'Pharoah Sanders', a 15-minute track where both musicians let us know why have they been working together for so many years: their connection is incredible. I love how they understand each other, how each of them produce a diversity of sounds, nuances, textures, how they embrace improvisation and produce countless feelings, because yeah, there is tranquility and peace, but there is also chaos and density, colorful atmospheres with spiritual and spacey touches. I love the bass sound at half the song, it creates dense but gentle atmospheres at the same time, it creates the background while sax produces charming sounds here and there.

'Milford Graves' starts in a chaotic way, Zorn's sax being played loud and endless, producing some tension while Laswell's bass cadency contrasts and later join the chaos. This is a quite interesting track because the two musicians create deep experimental atmospheres, adventurous sounds that both flow and collide, so it is a mixture of colours and emotions, and though there are moments one can feel a bit lost, one is in fact quite involved in that hypnotic chaos, it is great to realize about it, but the two musicians know very well how to produce those mesmerizing effects in the listener.

'Wayne Shorter' is the shortest (pun intended) haha of the album. A great track where we can appreciate once again their improvisaiional skills and the interplay and connection between both instruments and minds. Creativity with no boundaries is something we can relate with the five names here, because though Zorn and Laswell are the magicians, Shorter, Graves and Sanders are/were the inspiration.

A quite nice tribute, another Zorn release not to miss, however, I bet this might not be for everyone's likes, so my final rate will be three stars.

Enjoy it!