John Zorn

John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist with hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, and producer across a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, surf, metal, klezmer, soundtrack, ambient and improvised music. He incorporates diverse styles in his compositions which he identifies as avant-garde or experimental. Zorn was described by Down Beat as "one of our most important composers".

Zorn established himself within the New York City downtown music movement in the mid-1970s performing with musicians across the sonic spectrum and developing experimental methods of composing new music. After releasing albums on several independent US and European labels, Zorn signed with Elektra Nonesuch and received wide acclaim with the release of The Big Gundown, an album reworking the compositions of Ennio Morricone. He attracted further attention worldwide with the release of Spillane in 1987, and Naked City in 1989. After spending almost a decade travelling between Japan and the US he made New York his permanent base and established his own record label, Tzadik, in the mid-1990s.

Mount Analogue

Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing is a classic novel by the early 20th century, French novelist René Daumal.

The novel is both bizarre and allegorical, detailing the discovery and ascent of a mountain, the Mount Analogue of the title, which can only be perceived by realising that one has travelled further in traversing it than one would by travelling in a straight line, and can only be viewed from a particular point when the sun's rays hit the earth at a certain angle.

"Its summit must be inaccessible, but its base accessible to human beings as nature made them. It must be unique and it must exist geographically. The door to the invisible must be visible."

Daumal died before the novel was completed, providing an uncanny one-way quality to the journey. The leader of the expedition - "Father Sogol" is the "Logos" spelled backwards. In other words, the leader of the expedition to climb the mysterious mountain that unites Heaven and Earth is the Logos.

Mount Analogue (album)

Mount Analogue is an album by John Zorn released in January 2012 on the Tzadik label.

Reception

Allmusic said "From Jewish and other Middle Eastern folk musics to soundtrack atmospherics, exotica-tinged jazz, Latin rhythms, and contemporary classical inquiries into minimalism, tone, space, color, and counterpoint, all are on display in this wonderfully musical, meditative, hypnotic, and "mystical" work. The accessibility factor in Mount Analogue is high; what begins as a musical question eventually resolves, usually through a circular method that is deeply satisfying". Martin Schray commented "The musicians easily move between angular new classical music, restrained mumbling and panting, 1950s film noir soundtracks, Jewish or Middle Eastern folk, the typical John Zorn exotica, jazz, lonely piano tunes, or minimalist approaches. Every note is exactly at the right place, there is not one bell tone too much, which creates a lush atmosphere on the one hand but the spooky and creepy elements refer to a dark world also inherent in this music".

Mount Analogue (disambiguation)

Mount Analogue can refer to:

  • Mount Analogue (Antarctica), a mountain
  • Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, a novel by René Daumal
  • Podcasts:

    John Zorn

    ALBUMS

    Rituals

    Released 2005

    Euclid's Nightmare

    Released 1997
    PLAYLIST TIME:

    The Ballad Of Hank Mccain

    by: John Zorn

    No one knows better than the king
    Life's a filthy dirty game
    Very very hard to win
    No one knows better than the king
    How to disregard the pain
    Never, never let it in
    No one knows better than the king
    That an angry man goes blind
    Knocks his head against the wall
    No one knows better than the king
    How it hurts a man to fight
    That he's human after all
    No one knows better than the king
    What a desperate man may do
    When it gets too hard to bear
    No one knows better than the king
    How to spit on the taboos
    As they thought he'd never dare
    No one knew better than the king
    How to care for number one
    How to take and never give
    No one knew better than the king
    That when all is said and done
    That's the only way to live
    No one knew better than the king
    Just how angry you can be
    When they cage you in with laws
    No one knew better than the king
    That a man who thinks he's free
    knocks his head against a wall
    No one knew better than the king
    Just how bitter it would be
    To be beaten after all
    No one knew better than the king
    They're the ones who fix the game
    They're the ones with loaded dice
    No one knew better than the king
    That they'd get him all the same




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