Sometime in the mid-1980s, John Zorn was hanging out in New York City’s East Village when he made a career-altering choice: to take in a hardcore show at CBGBs. The experience profoundly shaped his next album, the ultra fast, ultra brief Spy vs Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman.
Category: John Zorn
John Zorn :: The Gift
The genre known as exotica stands just next door to a number of considerably better respected musical forms. Speed up that reverbed guitar and you’ve got surf. Slow it down and you’re in the spaghetti western territory of Ennio Morricone. With a good deal more distortion and chops, you’ll be at spitting distance from acid rock. With a fleshed out jazz instrumentation and an expanded improvisational element and you’re not too far from the early Sun Ra. Perhaps this is what drew the American avant-garde saxophonist, composer and impresario John Zorn to it.