一听音乐网

by Thom JurekThe year 2008 has been an amazingly busy one for John Zorn. This is the third of four additions to his ever growing Film Works series; he also recorded the utterly beautiful Dreamers this year, and his collection of Masada compositions, Book of Angels, has grown to ten volumes with the release of Lucifer. Film Works, Vol. 21 combines two very different scores for a pair of films that are as different from one another as night and day, and are played by two different ensembles. The first seven cues make up the score to famed fetish film director Maria Beatty's Belle de Nature. Beatty and Zorn have worked together before, on two other erotic films, Elegant Spanking, which was documented on Film Works, Vol. 4, and The Black Glove (considered her finest picture), documented on Film Works, Vol. 6. Beatty's films focus on the edges of desire and lesbian love. The band on this set includes all Zorn veterans: guitarist Marc Ribot, harpist Carol Emanuel, and bassist extraordinaire Shanir Blumenkranz. This small chamber ensemble makes these first seven cues as riveting as they are beautiful. The sheer exotic nature of these strings all played together in woven layers of counterpoint and rhythmic and melodic invention creates a soundscape that sounds much more lush than it actually is. While each cue is a truly expansive small journey in its own right, when taken together they have the capacity to transport the listener to another place. That said, most notable is "Orties Cuisantes," on which Ribot simply cuts loose on the electric guitar with his requisite taste and aggressive bite and timing, made even more powerful by the interlocking grooves played by Emanuel and Blumenkranz in support....