John Zorn - Music And Its Double (USA 2012)

Uncle Roddus Album Of The Week

The second CD of my John Zorn purchases, which arrived from Amazon with the previously reviewed "The Concealed" is one of Zorn's Composer series releases where John struts his stuff in the classical side of things. Most of his releases in this series, I would consider to be avant-garde, and although I am far from any type of expert, it is rooted in the serialism of the mid 20th centuary but I could compare it somewhat to the Musique concrète of Edgard Varese and of course Frank Zappa(who's Classical compositions were strongly influenced by Varese), both of whom I am familiar with and enjoy their music. Also Zorn is influenced by the cartoon music of Carl Stalling.  So that means that Johns pieces presented here are somewhat chaotic sounding abrupt and disjointed with little in the way of melody. Quite experimental and although challenging to listen to, I do like this music and this particular release although I am not really qualified to pontificate at length as to the merits and quality of these compositions. I do like it enough to award it a rating of 3.5/5