It is easy to fault a few of Zorn's ideas as being completely sensationalistic without compositional merit to back it up, but even if there is a bit of that here as well, Kristallnacht works from a varied palate and is paced well enough to effectively produce an attainable avant-garde journey as opposed to some of his fractured output which doesn't compute a total.
"the window shatters at your feet. the men laugh." Submitted on: 2008-04-19
Sometimes we enjoy a musical experience not because it is nice and fun, like a pop song, but because the experience is challenging and incites an uncomfortable emotional reaction that is very powerful. _Kristallnacht_ from 1992 is John Zorn's earliest Jewish themed album, centered on Jewish existence in the twentieth century, and it is hopeful and tragic. I have listened to the album quite infrequently compared to most of the other Zorn discs I have, because it is actually rather upsetting. And this is not just because of the brutal second track, "Never Again", a punishing onslaught of high-frequency noise and breaking glass. The whole album hits like a metaphysical sledgehammer. And as always, Zorn's collaborators are some of the best musicians in the world (Marc Ribot, Mark Feldman, Anthony Coleman, Mark Dresser, William Winant, Favid Krakauer, Frank London).
"Shtetl" is an atmospheric klezmer piece for violin, trumpet, and clarinet, where trumpet solos grow more intense as German announcements appear and add fear to the foreboding but otherwise peaceful evocation of ghetto life. Then "Never Again", Zorn's representation of the "night of broken glass"...it is hard to explain its power. i think the warnings about nausea and dizziness from listening to this are somewhat dubious, but listening on headphones except at very low volumes is definitely a bad idea. Some speakers put the high-frequencies out harshly, some do not. The piece is about 13 minutes and consists largely of high-pitched electronics and manifold layers of shattering glass. A few other sounds and samples are interspersed, like footsteps, pizzicatos, voices, and a bell. It is not easy or pleasant to listen to, but it is a very well done composition and I would like to think that most mature listeners could "handle" this it. What follows is "Gahelet", which is far less abrasive but unsettling in its own way. The piece takes form out of near-silence -- gossamer wisps of electric guitar, violin legatos, and distant sounds of voices on the radio.
"Tikkun" is a short cut-and-paste style piece, for acoustic guitar, violin, and percussion. It swings randomly between different moods and tempos. Similar is the file-card composition "Tfizia", which starts with a dissonant splatter of petulant noise. It then proceeds through nearly twenty stylistic changes in its eight minutes, including cartoony klezmer, gnashing metal, avant-garde rackets, rumbling low piano keys accompanied by metallic screeching, voices & static, and beautiful trumpet solos evoking Middle Eastern lands. Even though this piece changes very often, it feels very coherent on some level (not just cuz lots of the parts are "jewish" sounding, ok).
"Barzel (Iron Fist)" is the militaristic assault, its heavy, distorted guitars and odd-meter percussion sounding like brutal metal in slow motion, with creepy sounding sirens and weird electronic noise slashing through the sludge. Suddenly everything drops out to just very distorted guitar shredding and some kind of static-y sample of unintelligible jewish singing. Then everything kicks back in before it ends. At loud volumes this is almost as brutal as "Never Again", but it lasts only two minutes. The album fades on a nice note, "Gariin". It starts very minimal, with just drumming, then grows into a very peculiar piece with jazzy drums and bass and amazing guitar jamming from the god Ribot, which gets progressively dissonant before climaxing with a startling crescendo. Very busy and noisy, it sounds like a highly musical construction yard. It fades out with just percussion.
An excellent album, worth engaging with deep attention and an open mind. One of Zorn's best in terms of overall experience.
Lament beyond the past into the future Submitted on: 2007-08-14
November 9, 1938. A lot of crystal was crushed to powder during that night in the Third Reich and Poland. Jews upon Jews were killed and piled up in the streets waiting for the trucks that were to take the bodies to the disposal dump, just like so much trash every morning or so. That's the dedication. What about the music? We enter in a world of sounds first. The sounds of the ghetto, the sounds of the night. Natural sounds like some music from Jewish festivities or nostalgia. Like the Germans and their language ever present in the Ghetto to keep these Jews in line. And these voices start becoming repetitive because out of habit in the ghetto you don't listen to the words, only to the intonation since the words were always the same provided they were in a dominant language, German for example? But it could have been interesting to give some other languages because there were, King Rumkovski for example in Lodz. Then of course a lot of crystal or glass is broken over and over again and again again without stopping for minutes and minutes and a fiddle from high on top of some roof starts lamenting its notes on a background of some repetitive litany from some Jews. It is interesting to listen to tracks like "Never again". Everyone hopes so, but it has happened quite a few times since then, even if the Jews were not the victims, even if the victims were not a racial or ethnic group (though this also happened) but political minorities that had to be eliminated by decision of the political authorities of a country, like Cambodia, or Russia and its gulag, or China and its Cultural Revolution. We should of course also think of us, ourselves and our own actions. Even if the projects and the methods were not the same, what the French did in Indochina or Algeria, what the British did in Kenya or even India, what the Americans did in Vietnam and now in Iraq, not to speak of Korea or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all these do not have to be ashamed as for the results, the violence and the brutality. The tiger cages of the French colonial army in Indochina, the use of electricity, the recourse to drowning or other water tortures of most invading and colonial armies have little to envy from the Germans. No the shoah is not unique, neither in results nor in objective. Even as for the ethnic or racial approach, the extermination of gypsies was not very different. But the music is a lot more interesting than the titles that are supposed to enlighten us as for the meaning, or rather the general orientation of the interpretation that is mostly added to the music. The Jewish music that intervenes here and there as small tidbits is always submerged by the noise of breaking glass, or rough voices, or lamentations, or percussions that are dull and deep like fate, like the fate of a people that self-declared itself a long long time ago the chosen ones. So chosen that they were thus and therefore designated as the necessary and natural volunteer victims of all persecutions you can imagine, of being the easiest scapegoat to consider in any situation. But is it that simple? If we follow Saul Bellow, certainly not. There is in the Jewish people, and creed, according to Saul Bellow, some morbidity that makes them consider death as a real and necessary companion in life, which makes them easily unaware of hostility when it appears. And the music expresses that very well. These musical sentences that never end or are cut short by some noise or some fiddler on a roof, or some voices, contain their own death in their notes, contain the death of the individuals they come from and are supposed to represent. This morbid dimension is fascinating because death is really the natural companion of life, as Saul Bellow would say, this earth we live on is the big universal mother and the common grave for everyone at the very same time. That reduces the triple goddess to two, and life itself is absent per se, only birth and death, no growing and decaying, but this reduction of the ternarity of God is present from the very first verse of Genesis. And even Solomon imposed a binary structure onto the ternary divinity of the world by doubling it into six, the two cups of man and God. And this music is very close to that binary reduction, black versus white, Jewish versus aggression, menaced life versus triumphant death. The rest is nothing but a vast lamentation. Thus the music is great, strong, powerful, fascinating, inspiring and mesmerizing (if that is not a David's star, what is?). Let yourself dive and even drown into this music and just pray for humanity to be one day able to really stop war, any organized violence and even gratuitous violence. Will the deep death instinct of man accept to lay down its weapons and to start loving others? Asking the question is to divide humanity into two camps those who think so and those who don't, and in between a mass of unconcerned and indifferent egotists.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Uncomfortable masterpiece. Submitted on: 2005-11-10
In 1992, John Zorn, then best known for his Game Pieces, tribute albums and the more recent genre-defying triumph of Naked City, entered the studio to record his first real exploration of his Jewish Heritage-- a musical tapestry to represent "Kristallnacht", or the Night of Broken Glass. For those unaware of the incident-- Nazi Germany planned a coordinated attack on the evening of November 9, 1938 on Jewish businesses and synagogues-- destroying everything they could-- 7500 business were destroyed, over 250 synagogues were burned, and nearly a hundred Jews murdered. This is the subject for which "Kristaalnacht" was written.
In the studio, Zorn assembled a small ensemble-- Mark Feldman (violin), Marc Ribot (guitar), Anthony Coleman (keyboards), Mark Dresser (bass) and William Winant (percussion), along with David Krakauer (clarinet and bass clarinet) and Frank London (trumpet) on a pair of tracks-- to record the seven movement piece. It is, in all senses, a modern masterpiece, one of the most beautiful and horrible statements of music ever made, and it may well be the most powerful recording in the catalog of John Zorn.
"Kristaalnacht" contains a bit of everything-- opening with a loping klezmer piece ("Shtetl"), ominous and dark, with the brief, melancholy lines over accordian interspersed with recordings of Adolf Hitler. This gives way into the justifiably noteworth "Never Again"-- twelve minutes of the sound of glass breaking punctuated by the sound of running and brief musical interludes-- Zorn warns against repeated listens, but after the moody openers, it's a thing of tortorous emotion. Most importantly, it accomplishes what it sets out to do.
When it does finally end, the piece moves in dozens of different directions-- "Tikkun" feels like after the storm, where the air is still electric but somehow stil, "Tzfia" finds Zorn's cartoon influence and the Naked City soiund coming forth, brief interludes and seemingly random swaps of sounds and instrumentation dominate the piece, no one sound stays present for more than 20 or 30 seconds. When the piece does settle (in the track "Barzel"), it is frantic, angry and uncomfortable, and certainly hard to process and understand. The album closes on a frantic note-- the genre defying, guitar driven "Gariin" is something totally unique, over frantic percussion and a walking bass line, Ribot manages some of the most astonishing guitar playing you've ever heard.
When it's over, it's an experience. While I think Zorn has done better work than "Kristaalnacht", I don't think anything in his catalog quite matches its power. Highly recommended.
Great and scary album; beware the second track! Submitted on: 2004-04-27
I've got about 30 Zorn albums, and this is one of the greats. Not one of the more listenable albums, though there are some great Klezmer-inspired pieces here. The second track is like being inside the breaking glass of Kristallnacht, and it's not a listening experience that I can recommend more than once or twice--in fact, it's the only piece on the album that didn't make it to my iPod.
But the rest of the album is chilling, effective, and terrific.
![The Circle Maker [2-CD Set] by John Zorn](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512NDuLqeKL._SL160_.jpg)
Not shattering but sharp
"the window shatters at your feet. the men laugh."