Search - John Zorn :: Cobra

Serpentine free-improv assault.

Lord Chimp | Monkey World | 02/07/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"John Zorn's _Cobra_ is one of the most frequently performed compositions in 20th century art music. It is a "game piece," a title Zorn gave to numerous compositions based on structured improvisation. Here, under the supervision of the composer, is the definitive performance with some of the best musicians in the world. While _Cobra_ could essentially be played by any group of musicians, Zorn's work is usually written with certain artists considered. All the musicians here are ones that Zorn has worked closely with before, and with that tighter social element Zorn is able to devise a thrilling, masterful performance.



The musicians are Jennifer Choi and Mark Feldman (violin), Erik Friedlander (cello), Trevor Dunn and Mark Dresser (bass), Josh Roseman (trombone), Marcus Rojas (tuba), Ikue Mori (laptop computer), Annie Gosfield (sampler), Jamie Saft (keyboards), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Susie Ibarra and Cyro Baptista (drums & percussion), and Derek Bailey (guitar). The music? It's very odd, but strangely pleasant, despite having most musical relations stemming from technicalities of the "game" rather than rhythm, harmony, or melody. _Cobra_ is avant-garde, but it's lots of fun. What other album is dissonant, funky, mind-twistingly complex, lethal, pretty, and catchy all at once?



Very highly recommended. This one of the Zorn's best releases.

"

A good introduction to John Zorn's Game Pieces.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 04/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"John Zorn's enormous catalog is full of challenging music, but none perhaps more so than the Game Pieces. Describing them is a bit difficult, but in brief: a Game Piece is a compositional framework for improvisation. The musicians are not given chords, scales, melodies, rhythms or anything like that to work with, rather they are presented with a set of rules for structured communication. The early Game Pieces are rather difficult listens-- it's incredibly hard to follow what's going on in them at times, particularly in large group settings (Pool), but as time wore on, either Zorn's rules became better at defining something that made sense on record or the performers better understood how this works, or perhaps some combination thereof. The net result is the later Game Pieces are significantly easier to understand on record, "Cobra" being a great example of this.



Having been recorded several times before (Cobra (Studio & Live Versions), John Zorn's Cobra: Tokyo Operations '94 and John Zorn's Cobra: Live At The Knitting Factory), the piece has the unusual position of being both familiar and yet alien. Performed by a large ensemble of Zorn regulars who clearly have worked in this environment many times, the stew they whip together is highly coherent, very listenable and, after many listening, highly rewarding.



I suspect that in addition to all of this, my enjoyment of this performance has a lot to do with the material available on it-- underneath the CD tray, Zorn published some or all of the rules-- they don't make a ton of sense in isolation, but if you combine them with clips from the recording session for this album you can see on the superb A Bookshelf On Top Of The Sky, you can get a really good feel for what's going on here.



The music itself-- unpredictable, engaging, exciting-- look no further than "Uluwati", driven largely by guitarist Derek Bailey. Performing a fractured guitar riff with laptop musician Ikue Mori providing counterpoint, Bailey seems to inspire a tribal feel out of drummer Susie Ibarra, who gives him a loping backdrop to work on. It proves to be quite interesting because what you get is the usual Derek Bailey energy but with the other musicians maintaining their own identity rather than assuming something relative to his.



"Uluwati" is just one example though-- other feels, motifs and sounds emerge throughout the recording, from a "pass the puck" feel that seems to come straight out of Hockey on opener "Pendet" to an almost straight swinging jazz feel during parts of "Tamangiri" (check that loping bass over Ibarra's gentle high hat meanderings and later Jamie Saft's downright funky Rhodes workout that could have come straight off an early fusion Miles record) to a highly cinematic, genre blurring, building motif ("Penganggahan").



Is "Cobra" for everyone? Not really, it's actually quite a different way of listening, and it's not going to be everyone's thing. But for anyone interested in improvisation, this is a critical record to understanding Zorn's Game Pieces. Highly recommended."