Mystic Fugu Orchestra - 1995 - Zohar

Mystic Fugu Orchestra 

1995

Zohar

01. Alef

02. Book of Splendors

03. Frog Doyna

04. The Dybbuk

05. 2000 Years

06. Goniff Dance

07. Rov Nova

08. Zayin

Rav Yechida - Voice

Rav Tzizit - Harmonium

In original liner notes, this album is described as "the first in a series of Zorn/Eye releases planned for Tzadik in 1995", but only one album followed the same year, Nani Nani by Yamantaka Eye and Dekoboko Hajime (alias of John Zorn).

From the inventive minds of John Zorn and Yamantaka Eye comes an intimate and highly original duo project inspired by historical recordings of ancient Judaica. The Mystic Fugu Orchestra masquerades as "newly discovered" recordings from the Mystical tradition of Kabbalah - paralleling 14th century author Moses de Leon's original presentation of of his Kabbalistic classic "The Zohar" or "book of Splendors" as having been discovered by him and actually written by Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai centuries before. Issued at a special low price, this CD single is the first of a series of Zorn/Eye releases planned for Tzadik records in 1995. Humourous, touching, traditiuonal, irrerverent, perplexing, soulful. A sound that could only come about with years of friendship, empathy and collaboration, The Mystic Fugu Orchestra will surprise and delight you as yet another unusual direction in music from these two masters of the unexpected.

For some reason (maybe the perplexed reviews here and elsewhere) I avoided buying this for years then recently, finally, relented, almost twenty years after this was released - and its great. Its more of a sound sculpture than anything like Zorn's Masada masterpieces - its a truly radical piece of Jewish culture, its weird, cantorial-derived melodies almost completely submerged beneath a thick layer of surface crackle. I wonder if, in part, its a sly dig at the klezmer/Yiddish folk revival that preceded Zorn's Radical Jewish Culture - perhaps a comment on the fetishisation of 'authenticity' that can sometimes occur when an (almost) lost art form is revived by impassioned modern artists. Whereas Zorn and like-minded Jewish musicians pushed Jewish music into new territories, and explored and established new possibilities for what Jewish music could be, the klezmer revival was far more concerned (for a while at least) with recreating perfect renditions of decades old recordings. Here Zorn and Eye are faking an artefact - a strange slice of Yiddish avant garde expression almost lost until the very end of the twentieth century - and loading it with meaning. Caustic (at first) surface noise (an audible declaration of the near irreversible damage done to Yiddish civilisation?) is turned up to 11, and acts as 'proof' of obscurity and authenticity, the CD booklet gives none of the usual precise Tzadik information about the recording circumstances, an untranslated quote by Gershom Scholem (the preeminent modern scholar of Jewish mysticism) adorns the inside cover. Everything is obscured.

But away from the iconoclastic (very Jewishly subverting Jewish 'icon' worship) context, this is odd and delightful, exquisitely avant garde and is more of a Pale of Settlement sibling to Naked City's dark ambient masterpiece 'Absinthe', than it is one of the wonders of the Masada/Books of Angels works.

The melodies are odd, the harmonium wheezes throughout and the crackles are used in a way that is actually relaxing and soothing. The crackles and pops of vinyl records used to drive me insane when I was young - here, because they are a deliberate and artfully controlled compositional element - texturally and rhythmically percussive not just random and chaotic - they are strangely calming.

This is still a vital RJC recording - it is by far the most experimental of Zorn's explorations into Jewish culture, even more so than 'Krystallnacht'.