At the Mountains of Madness: Tzadik Records catalog now streaming

A fresh thread for Zornverse recommendations, liveblogging, etc

Tzadik: Search & Destroy

John Zorn: Classic or Dud?

Funny that you picked this title, because when I looked this morning At the Mountains of Madness was one of the albums I couldn't find, at least on Tidal.

My very first swing at this (Jewlia Eisenberg - Trilectic) is a 10/10 all-time classic. Can only imagine what remains to be found

Just kinda wish this was on Bandcamp too! But good to see regardless.

Ha, I imagine it's a big lift to get everything properly tagged & uploaded to digital distro, seems like it will all be there eventually?

My first listen is Multiplicities II: A Repository of Non-Existent Objects
https://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=8399
Julian Lage, Brian Marsella on piano (new name to me but he's pretty amazing here), Ches Smith, Jorge Roeder. It's great, lots of killer dual guitar/piano solos. The Zorn stop/start skronky moments are really appealing in this acoustic context.

Ironically, Trilectic is missing so far. Ditto JZ's Bagatelles, Episome by Otomo Yoshihide/Bill Laswell/Yoshida Tatsuya, probably a lot more but it's early days of digital crate-digging.

I'm making a giant Tzadik catalog playlist, and a track from that Jewlia Eisenberg album came up, it was very good and I will definitely dig further. It weirdly reminded me of Moomin Voices which is an album of jazzy songs about the Moomins featuring singer Johanna Grüssner.

Don't know if this thread is meant to cover albums credited to John Zorn, but a couple others that stood out included

The Mockingbird - this is credited to Zorn, but it he doesn't perform on it, it features Carol Emanuel, Bill Frisell, and Kenny Wolleson. What I heard seemed to be mostly a cool sounding bed of chimes over which Frisell does some ripping guitar solos. Very much my shit.

Kramer - The Greenberg Variations - no idea why Zorn is credited on this, it appears to be a Kramer solo album and it's awesome

Interesting, on Tidal it's credited to Kramer. I anticipate JZ shitting bricks in public about this rollout.

Oh fuck yeah - gonna go blast Redbird.

My first listen: the new(ish) Homenaje A Remedios Varo, which I believe is also Brian Marsella, Julian Lage, Jorge Roeder and Ches Smith.

Mystic Fugu Orchestra yes, Nani Nani and Naninani II no.

Correction, Naninani II is available

Double correction, both Nani Nani albums are there.

Is this on any other services than Tidal?

I'm listening to stuff on Spotify.

lotta stuff on apple music (barely findable w/ its terrible interface)

#2 - John Zorn 'Quatrain', which is Julian Lage and Gyan Riley both on acoustic guitar. Just really lovely, Zorn's guitar music blends composition and improv more seamlessly than some of the other groups to my ears.

As I mentioned on the John Zorn thread, I'm trying to get all of these into one massive playlist so that they are easier to find. I currently have close to 500 of roughly 900 releases accounted for.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4QzGKbxwEXyW5caVfcPqm1?si=bd1392112b0f46ec

This feels like when Aphex Twin dropped all those unreleased tracks. Except these have all been released and they're all full length and (probably) all pretty awesome.

Last one for the week (since this will mostly be a work listening activity for me) -

Brian Marsella Trio - Buer: The Book of Angels, vol. 31
I started listening to his other trio record with Christian McBride and wasn't in the mood, but this is fantastic. Kenny Wolleson & Trevor Dunn killing it. Today has really made me a Brian Marsella convert.

I will say that this deluge has taught me how many different bands are named Masada.

Let’s not forget that this label has way more than Zorn

lol. I lied, I also listened to "John Zorn" - Suite for Piano, performed by (of course) Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, and Ches Smith. Also sounded fantastic but I'm going to have to come back to this when I'm not multi-tasking, this one also really blurs what might be written vs improvised.

I came across a quote from Julian Lage about how he respects that Zorn will just write 300 new songs and go have them performed by 15 bands, maybe a bit hyperbolic (or not!) but what a maniac. I think I've said this elsewhere but if Zorn had learned to use a DAW instead of needing musicians to perform his work, who knows how many *more* albums he might be releasing. Or maybe that's not true, it would probably take more time to program and produce everything than it does to write the charts and book a studio session.

xp

xpost Are there really 900 Tzadik releases?

it would appear so, yes - Discogs says 948

You know, I've never really looked at the credits on many of these records, but I've always been impressed how well recorded they all are. Is there a house engineer or producer?

In this interview he talks about having done 15-20 records, but his wiki says he recorded over 150 Tzadik records by the end of 2020.

https://sonicscoop.com/borne-of-john-zorn-marc-urselli-records-nycs-marathon-man/

(gotta say I don't like the drum sound on these recent ones, but it's serviceable and I do kinda like the feel that they're just getting sounds and going for it, no time to waste fiddling around)

Most of these sound fairly naturalistic to me

I'm just letting this giant list roll on shuffle and it's pretty crazy how consistently high the quality is. I don't even really love the more abstract avant-garde pieces or the chaotic Mr. Bungle jams, and there's obviously plenty of both, but I'd say I can groove with at least 75% of what I've heard so far.

I'm sure the acoustic albums are pretty hands-off, but once you start amplifying things, especially radically dynamic stuff, I imagine the producer or engineer has more work to do.

I'm not suggesting engineers don't do anything on these recordings, just that the sounds aren't being radically altered or processed from their sources. It sounds like they are mostly faithfully capturing live performances and making them sound as good as possible, perhaps adding in a bit of atmosphere.

I'd never heard the first Kayo Dot album, it's pretty cool.

Jordan, not sure which ones you weren't liking the drums on. HOMENAJE A REMEDIOS VARO is the main one that sounds weird to me, like the mics on the individual cymbals are pushed way up in the mix and panned pretty hard, it's a bit distracting and unbalanced, although I still like the music on that one overall.

It's nothing that really bothers me...on those piano trio records I was posting above, the snare is pretty compressed, which I'm into (more compression on jazz records please!), but it's a very generic and colorless modern drum should to me. I usually wish jazz records had more room sound and more saturation on the drums. But like I said, I also appreciate the consistency and sort of flat documentarian approach here, and I like the idea that Zorn is in there every week getting these records knocked out. And all the other instruments sound great.

Gyan Riley's solo guitar album is beautiful morning coffee listening. Looking forward to checking out the last Ikue Morie and other non-Zorn albums.

I get the sense that Ches Smith really favors gear that has this very precise and articulated clarity, and yeah, it doesn't sound bad exactly, but it could use a bit more oomph.

Speaking of art and packaging, I really have no idea who designs these CDs, but as a catalog I'd put the Tzadik aesthetic up there with anything 4AD and ... what other more or less contemporary label has a cool cover aesthetic?

I love that Tzadik picked their look on Day One and have never deviated from it. You know Zorn and his designer just email the artists and say “this is your album cover - hope you like it!”

The Nonesuch-released Naked City album is still not available on Spotify in the United States.
I found it online but none of the songs are enabled to play and it doesn't come up in a search using the app.
I assume that is because they cannot let me stream it in this country, I am open to correction.
So maybe you can if you're fortunately enough to not live here.

While searching for it online I found the contemporaneous review in the NY Times by on Pareles that some may find interesting:
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/08/arts/recordings-there-are-8-million-stories-in-john-zorn-s-naked-city.html

I do not find the Tzadik-released Naked City box which includes that album either.

Fortunately I still have my CD and it can be streamed through YouTube but not the properly licenced YouTube Music, I don't think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xC0ZvuEuMg

I'm listening to Syzygys - Complete Studio Recordings. A microtonal Japanese pop duo featuring Harry Partch's 43-tone organ? Yes, please!

Wait, are the other Naked City albums up yet?

the only one I see is live at the Knitting Factory

And yet if I search "naked city," I don't even get that.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5qlH2F8gU9YeND6Pc4Cq3N?si=r1BcwyujSxKCTZBpYmm7lg

I have also added it to my playlist

I'm currently checking out Tetsu Inoue's Psycho-Acoustic (1998) and Fragment Dots (2000). I actually downloaded mp3s of these a while back, but this is prompting me to give them proper attention for the first time. His Inland is my favorite ambient album ever; I hear that one as a soundtrack to drifting over a gorgeous, hyper-detailed alien landscape, but the albums on Tzadik are completely different--pure glitch concrète. They remind me a lot of Stockhausen's tape stuff from the 60s (thinking Telemusik and Hymnen specifically) with fragments of static, synth squelches, field recordings, etc. flying in and out of the mix. Amazing on headphones. This kind of music would have been technically much easier to assemble in the late 90s than in the 60s, but by the 90s the universe of sounds at the artist's disposal had increased so much that more discernment was required to reach a good result. All this is to say these Inoue albums on Tzadik are very well-made if you're into that kind of thing.

I'm also digging Charles Curtis and Aleck Karis's 2004 recording of Morton Feldman's Patterns In A Chromatic Field. Spotify is currently crediting it to just Morton Feldman and John Zorn, so hopefully that gets fixed at some point. Compared to other recordings I've heard, this one is relatively dry (close-mic'd) and high-energy. Just beautiful, will surely be going back to it a lot as I explore other Tzadik stuff.

This thread is inspiring me to listen to old Tzadik CDs that I haven’t played in years. First up is The Days Run Away by Peter Garland, a quiet haunting minimal work for solo piano, kind of like Satie if nothing ever happened, ambient and pretty.

I found (Melt-Banana guitarist) Agata’s Spike, which I have on CD somewhere. Nice to know I can pull it up on my phone within a few seconds (mind you, I can do that with all my mp3s since I synced them to the cloud).

just here to rep for the yuka honda albums: cibo matto leftovers and faux video game cues. nothing but good vibes. definitely appreciate hearing these again. i love her so much.

Listening to the Electric Masada band, not the double live set mentioned in the title of this thread, but the single disc live set from Zorn’s 50th birthday celebration at Tonic. I think I might have been at one of those gigs. I think at the time I didn’t really get what they were going for (kind of a 70s fusion thing) and the heavy stuff sounded too busy, but I’m enjoying Ikue Mori’s sound effects and the busy percussion more on this listen.

I love that Nonesuch Naked City record, have had a burned copy of it since I was 19 and it still
plays, miraculously.

Listening to Eyvind Kang - The Yelm Sessions. Very nice cinematic orchestral pieces.

Bummer that the Hemophiliac record isn't available, it's way up there for me as far as successful examples of Mori/Zorn/Patton doing their thing, never understood why it is always been such a hard thing to locate/listen to?

there is a Hemophiliac live album from the 50th birthday series on there

Yeah and I'm sure it's cool (I haven't gotten to it yet) but the original https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemophiliac_(album) which was always a super-limited deal is great

Also, o.nate otm about the Mengelberg joint, maybe not an essential record but a fun listen, esp to hear him in context with Cohen and Perowsky

Wrote about this for Stereogum and picked a dozen titles for people to check out.

Nice read, this interview with Mathieu Amalric on his ongoing Zorn docus.

Anyone read the Arcana books? Would love a recommendation on where to start.

I bought the first volume back when it came out (2000?), and not only did I never read it, I only recently learned there have been several more volumes! I just picked flipped through it, though, and it seemed interesting, if pretty academic.

I bought the first volume back when it came out (2000?), and not only did I never read it, I only recently learned there have been several more volumes! I just picked flipped through it, though, and it seemed interesting, if pretty academic.

Some (but not all) of the contributing artists are in fact academics, so that makes sense. (BTW some contributions are interviews or conversationts, they're not all essays).

I've read all but two volumes (vols. 10 and 5) and my answer would be: pick one that has artists you're interested in. Some writing is indeed academic, with lots of sheet music to explain a point of the writer in question. There are very good contributions found in each volume, and less interesting/serious one to level that. Some personal highlights: Vol. 2 has a conversation with Jim O'Rourke (and someone else I can't remember) on Zorn's film work. Pat Metheny did a great essay on "Bright Size Life" in another one. I remember a very funny contribution by Derek Bailey. The deadpan Marc Ribot essay in the first volume (reprinted in his "Unstrung" book). A great interview with Barbara Hannigan (on adapting Berg's "Lulu" opera).

Bottom line: I'm happy Zorn financed and created this series, as I've discovered some great records from the selected discography section in each volume. Some of the writing is excellent, but as a whole, the quality of the individual volumes is very uneven.

(I think the first volume is a little different than the rest as it also includes pieces that were already published somewhere else (such as the Peter Garland travelogue). Also, I think the series as a whole has been an inspiration to William Parker "Conversation" book series on Rogue Art.)

There's a John Zorn public group on Faceache, and aside from the wealth of dumb posts, a lot of JZ/Tzadik Spotify playlists have been posted, carving out little subdivisions like sub-2:00 Masada pieces, Dreamers, Brian Marsella Trio, etc.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/336545431430782

shouldn't surprise me, but people seem real intense there

lol yeah, I had unfollowed the group for years until streaming started last month. I'll probably unfollow again since nobody posts Tidal playlists.

Jordan, put on your coffee playlist, the opening "Quatrain" is lovely stuff. Not your fault, but I wish it was credited to the artists on it.

Cool! I haven't gone back to any Tzadik catalog stuff in the last few weeks, but now I'll have to get in the habit of checking for their new releases.

New Lage/Frisell/Gyan Riley guitar trio record (under "John Zorn - Nothing Is As Real As Nothing") going straight to the Tzadik coffee playlist.

It's a good one

Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg now up on Tidal, so I assume it's on all the streamers.

folks over at the free jazz blog did a two-part overview late last year that highlights some tzadik releases post-deluge:

https://www.freejazzblog.org/2023/11/the-tzadik-stream-is-flood-part-1-of-2.html

I was considering heading to New York to see Electric Masada this May, and then I realized it's Memorial Day weekend, which suddenly turns it into a big expensive pain in the ass.

Is the new Painkiller album out? I don't see it on Tidal.

Fwiw, RYM lists it as coming out next Friday.

Yeah, I believe it's 11/29; I ordered a copy last week and they said it might take a couple of weeks to ship.

Ah, I was thinking earlier in the month for some reason.

I think it was supposed to come out 11/15 — there was a story in the Times that featured interviews with all three members published on 11/14:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/arts/music/painkiller-john-zorn-bill-laswell-mick-harris-samsara.html

But the story has been amended to include the 11/29 release date, so there must have been a problem getting the discs delivered. Tzadik uses the same manufacturers I do — A to Z Media — so I understand their predicament.

Ok I never knew that John Zorn made a Christmas album, what the fuck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dreamers_Christmas

Mike Patton doing a straight-faced version of The Christmas Song, lol

I love that certain folks are such weirdoes that not doing the weird thing becomes the weird thing.

I love even more that Zorn's own compositions on the album are called "Santa's Workshop" and "Magical Sleigh Ride".

I kind of like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxZ5mfT9gbo

All part of his Radical Jewish Culture initiative, I assume, since most of the canonical Christmas songs were written by Jewish guys...

I wrote about the return of Painkiller.

Cool, I look forward to reading it! There's another new/nu Painkiller album on its way, too.

PainKiller: The Equinox (#9319)
The Equinox is the exciting follow-up to PainKiller’s acclaimed 2024 release Samsara,
and this time around there is greater variety and flexibility in their approach. Six
tracks of various feels and tempi are performed with trademark Painkiller intensity,
with jazz, metal, noise, grindcore, techno, and more coming together into the
PainKiller gristmill. Inspired by the magickal procedures of Aleister Crowley, this
new recording is filled with great melodic, rhythmic, and textural invention. Almost
orchestral in its layered complexity, The Equinox is an exhilarating masterwork from
three radical and uncompromising forces of nature.
(February 2025)

I lucked into a ticket to see New Masada at the Village Vanguard Sunday (a matinee). I'm stoked.

I tried a couple of times with the new Painkiller on the stereo and could not get into it. This morning I listened on earbuds and it sounded better, still I don't love Harris's electronic drums (esp after listening to Collected Works again for the first time a while) they just don't have the same effect as his acoustic drumming, and it makes Samsara sound a bit inert. I am still curious to hear the other new one.

I'll post a picture later, but I was all but seated on the stage at the Vanguard show! Like, I could have reached out my arm and grabbed Lage's guitar neck!

No photography during the set, but I couldn't even be sneaky, because this was the view from my seat:

https://i.imgur.com/cDNv1xe.jpeg

That kit oozes confidence. Was it Wolleson on drums?

Yep! Dude hits haaaaaard.

Really enjoying Ou Phrontis, definitely on the chill side:

Nothing in Clouds Hill is to be a care upon the world. While I have it there shall be nothing exquisite or unique in it. Nothing to anchor me. —T.E. Lawrence

Ou Phrontis means "Who Cares" in Greek. Inscribed on the lintel above the door of T.E. Lawrence’s cottage at Clouds Hill it symbolized a place where Lawrence felt at home, free from the cares of the world. This fourth CD from the dynamic piano trio of Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, and Ches Smith (Suite for Piano, The Fourth Way, Ballades), presents eight challenging Zorn compositions inspired by stoic philosophy and science. The telepathic interplay and virtuosity of these remarkable musical masters is on full display here—a stunning collection of music that makes you think as much as it makes you feel.

Gotta say, not a week has gone by where I have not been tempted to buy that Masada boxed set. It helps a bit more that I just learned that while apparently Zorn does not own the rights, DIW gave him permission to release the set essentially as a fundraiser, which helps justify the price. I just wish it was, I dunno, $50 cheaper?

Man DIW is one of the last levels left that isn’t streaming, or available as legal downloads, or even seems to arrange with artists to give their maters back.

Masters

For some reason, a lot of David Murray's DIW releases are streaming, but very little else.

And re the Masada box, if you can, I'd say get it. I've wound up listening to it a lot more than I thought I would when I first bought it.

I have or at least had the OG CDs and ripped high quality copies of them years ago. It's having the physical artifact that appeals to me.

Turns out there will be three PainKiller reunion albums! Just got an email from Mick Harris this morning...

"We managed to make 3 new PK records this year [Zorn doesn't stop hahaha] I'm much happier with Vol 2 as Zorn gave me more direction and it works so much better and Vol 3 ambient I'm really chuffed about and that has been completed and ready for master and both Vol 2/3 I guess will drop this year at some point."

Didn't Mick hint he might be returning to drums?

Listening to vol 2 that came out Friday, definitely like it more than the first volume, I guess it doesn't feel exactly Painkiller-y to me, but it is still good

Got to see Zorn conduct Cobra over the weekend, was pretty cool/loud. I love how visual and fun it is. Like sign language, body language and expressions are as vital as Zorn's actual ... language of signs. It's a bit like watching the interaction between a pitcher and catcher. Zorn flashes a sign, a musician picks up on it and responds some way - by pointing to another musician, say, or putting on a headband - Zorn shakes his head and points to someone else instead, who in turn holds up a number and smiles, Zorn smiles back and nods, then puts on a ball cap, raises a card and points to someone else. And then controlled chaos ensues. At one point a pair of musicians (I wasn't familiar with most of this crew, bar Ches Smith, Trevor Dunn and Ikue Mori) pointed to themselves and signaled something to Zorn, who shook his head and audibly said "not interesting enough," then shifted to Simon Hanes (one of three bassists), who was wildly gesticulating and making his own signs. "See, I can always count on Simon," Zorn quipped.

Assuming there were no substitutions I missed, full lineup (in a cramped theatre gallery) was:

Matt Hollenberg / Guitar
Taylor Levine / Guitar
Celine Kang / Guitar
Simon Hanes / Electric Bass
Trevor Dunn / Electric Bass
Jay Campbell / Cello
Henry Fraser / Bass
Ikue Mori / Electronics
David Weinstein / Electronics
Sana Nagano / Drums
Ches Smith / Drums
William Winant Perc / Vibes
John Zorn / Sax Prompter

Vol.3 of the new Painkiller trilogy is out and this one I love, ambient, abstract, great, Zorn sounds incredible

New Zorn and Lombardo record just announced.