John Zorn
Cobra: Studio Version

"Cobra was the musical equivalent of the Marx brothers' slapstick" (Piero Scaruffi)

PART ONE: what's this. what is this.

John Zorn is one of those artists you can't ask: "Can you recommend some good songs by John Zorn?" That would be a pure and simple paradox. "Cobra" is one too. The music isn't there, there are fragments of invention and chaos, alternating like cascading clusters. Then a rational and twisted mind decided to divide them into tracks, adagios, allegros, maestosos. But the work flows continuously. The terms of classical music indicate the desire to create modern classical music, chaotic sounds birthed by dozens of exalted instruments, collagistic work for a psychiatric orchestra. Or maybe they just want to take us for a ride, who knows? The fragments chase each other, calm, heavy, absurd, human and non-human. The dada! The dada! The dada! Moments of silence at times to breathe, the famous Zornian time-outs. In "Cobra" I hear the studies of John Cage's "Landscapes," but here the approach is that of mental illness and creative genius. This is about freedom of expression, normal people wearing flannel shirts who, after drinking dozens of mixed carbonated drinks with caramelized monkey eyes, go into the studio and record improvisations mixed with impossible scores.

This is music you can dance to, just throw on some orange paint and twist your hands and mouth, hopping as if bitten by a tarantula. The guitars screech and the sun is high: the crazies have come out of the asylum in droves but wearing tails, and even the clucking of chickens finds considerable room. You can hear the music of the old continent, with gypsy and Yiddish accordions and the proverbial wisdom of the ancients, and the innovative sounds of the new world, like the rapping on the fingers of miners in Wisconsin. This record cannot be explained. This is a small monument to modern schizophrenia, it all starts from Lumpy Gravy by Francesco Zappa but then it's filtered through massive doses of noise and readings of National Geographic. Is this music against nature, I ask? But of course, it is, I answer! This music is unlistenable, come on: there's nothing sensible, nothing graspable, no rhythm whatsoever. Even a beginner violinist's screeching is more pleasant. They're just distorted convulsions. This music literally stinks. Stinks! It can't possibly be liked, that's for sure.

Yet - DRUMROLL!! - this music sends us into raptures! Because I know it and you know it, there's not much normal left in our heads. We're curious, we're sensitive, we are living beings. We like flair and abhor banality. So then what better than "Cobra"? Here, the madness has overflowed the vessel, and it did so with a holy racket. It's not about seeing the glass as half full or half empty. I warn you, there's no glass here at all. But can you be saved? Is there a way to escape all this? Maybe yes. Put this record in a trunk, seal it, and throw it off a high cliff. Then flood that portion of the sea with viscous, dark oil. Maybe it's done, maybe we can breathe. We are free!!! But then, when you least expect it, for example in the morning while you're having your coffee, at some point, the record jumps into your apartment through the window and hits you in the face, then sneaks into the player and starts playing. And there's nothing you can do, because now you are the one inside the trunk.

PART TWO: ta-ta- ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.

And then nothing?