John Zorn
IAO, Music In Sacred Light

THE REVIEW

And this, ladies and gentlemen, comes straight from the Lord of Darkness. What music do you think best represents Monsignor Lucifer, the Morning Star? A naive old-timer, one of those who sell their soul 3 for 2 at the crossroads, would say the blues. But times have changed. Hell has changed. The soul market has become a publicly traded reality, the real economy is no more, and the speculative bubble triumphs (unless there are crashes on Nasdaq).

So which little garden does the Lord of Evil choose to cultivate? The obvious choice of trashy metal no longer impresses anyone. Just see if a nerd in an Iron Maiden T-shirt is credible as an envoy of the Lord of Evil. At most, he’s believable as a beggar refugee at traffic lights. Times have changed, my friends. These days even at the movies, the devil wears Prada.

This work I am about to review is nothing less than dedicated to the figure of the Lord of Darkness. Figuratively speaking, of course; can you believe someone like Zorn still believes in big devil-goats with tails and forked tongues? Let’s say in the sense of a suite of seven pieces dedicated to alchemy, mysticism, Metaphysics, and Magic, both white and black. Zorn himself states clearly in the liner notes:
"I take "magical weapons" (pen, ink and paper), I write "incantations" (compositions) in the magical "language" (music)… I initiate "rituals" (recordings, performances)… I call forth "spirits" (musicians, engineers, printers, CD sellers and so forth… ). The composition and distribution of this CD is thus an act of Magic."

Real magic this is. Six tracks in the vein of ambient, with Cyro Baptista's percussion practically taking center stage, dominating in the diegabatantuenesco sense of the term. One track of true Death Metal, Death Metal with an edge (Leviathan), featuring the vocalizations of Mike Patton, who has often been to hell and can tell you all about it. And then back to the calm of ambient. But isn't that how the Eleusinian mysteries worked? Isn't that how Orpheus was dismembered by the Bacchantes?

A definitely hypnotic record, ideal for the most satanic moments of the day (for example, I think I'll play it during the next Good Friday BBQ rib dinner; there’s a blasphemer in every man and in every blasphemer an enchanted garden, as someone might say). The cover is completely and predictably white. Come on, we all know that white, the color of evil, from Poe’s Gordon Pym to the whiteness of Melville’s whale. I even believe that if you apply the resources of Kabbalah to the letters I. A. O., you will be able, if you're experienced and clever enough, to come up with 666 (and imagine, that even came out of Napoleon's name).

Fourth volume of the "Music Romance" series, which I have the impression is entirely dedicated to Martin Denny and, in general, to a contemporary reinterpretation of the "Exotica" genre.

DeGenres: Hypnotic exotica, ritual percussion, death metal, ambient, electronic.