John Zorn
Madness, Love and Mysticism

The Divine Comedy Of John Zorn: Purgatory

Some time ago, I reviewed two contrasting albums from the extensive Zornian discography, associating them with the two antipodes of Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno ("IAO") and Paradiso ("At The Gates Of Paradise").
Here we are, then, at the conclusion of my hypothetical afterlife trilogy by the world's most erratic and prolific saxophonist.

As many of you may know, Zorn is not a conventional musician: he does not confine himself to a single genre and certainly is not for everyone. He goes from schizophrenic grindcore to more conventional jazz, passing through Japanese folk, opera, traditional Jewish music, exotica, raw noise, avant-garde metal, waiting-room music vignettes, and sacred music. 
Behind his most famous outbursts, however, Zorn has also carved out a solid path in contemporary classical and chamber music, releasing albums composed by him and sometimes performed by professional classical musicians. He transitions from avant-garde string works (the recent "Lemma", "From Silence To Sorcery") to true sonic gardens of rare beauty ("The Goddess").

If you ever want to venture into Zorn's classical landscape, you need only enter this purgatory: "Madness, Love And Mysticism", in my opinion, his most successful in this regard. Never too intellectual and cold, very engaging and, above all, beautiful and of rare carnality for the genre.

With three musicians around him (Jennifer Choi on violin, Stephen Drury on piano, and Erik Friedlander on cello), Zorn generates three long compositions ("Le Momo", "Untitled", "Amour Fou") which, with their sudden mood swings, seem to confirm the clarifying power of the title.
This power is also evident in the extraordinary cover, a frame from Bunuel’s "L'Age D'Or", a film that more than any other synthesizes— with an animalistic and elegant impact— love, death, repression, and sexual desire.

Purgatory, as we were saying. 
Purgatory because in this work, just like in Bunuel’s film, serene and placid emotions (love) are contrasted with sudden sonic outbursts soaked in hysteria and nervous collapse. Between a caress and a wild coupling in the mud, the three compositions flow, managing to strike the imagination, dragging us into abysses of misunderstanding and unexpected hypnotic beauty.
It is difficult to concretely explain how it sounds (as it is for all the albums of the musician in question), but it is so easy to close your eyes and let yourself be transported into a limbo of lovers in an emotional crisis, because this— despite lacking sweetened lyrics— is an extraordinary love album.
An album divided between whispers in the ear and fingers bitten off, between kisses on the neck and declarations screamed in tears.

A nod to master Cage and plenty, plenty of pathos in a sad, sweet, and murderous album, where an inexplicable erotic charge bursts in with fury. 

Flesh trembling, shuddering under kisses stolen in desperation without any release.

Absolutely unmissable.