‘Live At Tonic’ is
perhaps Masada’s greatest live album, benefitting from being not only one of
the later, tighter and more muscular live entries, but also crucially being
recorded in front of a home crowd, who really add to the atmosphere and
excitement levels.
Featuring two
complete sets from the same night, we have here more than two total hours of
music that takes in everything (almost) from the Masada arsenal. And as with
all of the quartets live recordings, the music reaches even higher levels than
the already excellent studio works.
Throughout we get
beautiful balladry with sultry atmospheres, and languid solos, and also furious
frenzies with pounding rhythms and the front-line of John Zorn’s saxophone and
Dave Douglas’ trumpet playing interwining and mult-layering dual melody lines.
Disc one even touches on early 70’s era Miles
Davis, in the heady brew and thick atmosphere generated, especially the driving
pacy rhythms created by the winning combination of Greg Cohen’s bass finesse
and Joey Baron’s incredibly multi-faceted drumming (whose hand drums in
particular are one hell of a secret weapon). A seventeen minute epic ‘Karaim’
makes for a beautiful yet blistering opener, carried the whole way throughout
by an undulating desert wind-swept sounding hypnotic bass that anchors
everything else here, be the unified or split horns, or Baron’s mix of hand and
drumstick percussion playing. ‘Ner Tamid’ that follows manages to be distinctly
different, with a more straight-ahead bop style (comparatively) that winds to a
close in a relatively succinct five minutes.
‘Acharai Mot’ is
John Zorn does Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’, and throwing in some Ornette for
good measure, with everyone playing full-force, and cooking up a storming
maelstrom of sound. ‘Kisofim’ returns us to a desert-at-midnight’ pulse, with
typical dual playing from Zorn and Douglas, but Zorn just edging it with a
wistful yet focused and melodic solo that should hopefully silence any still
curmudgenly critics out there. ‘Jachin’ opens up with a fast paced yet soulful
bass groove, with Baron’s drum skittering over the top that becomes more
insistent as it goes on.
The second set here is even better, with the focus being on the
more intense and the more dramatic. Cohen shines throughout; standing strong
and providng a driving yet anchored pulse that impressively never wavers, even in
the face of the storm of horns and Barons thunderous drumming reaches new
levels of power.
Over two sets you could be forgiven for expecting repeats of
certain tunes, but of course, this being Zorn and Masada, with a catalogue of
hundreds of pieces, there is just the one. ‘Malkhut’ is perhaps Masada’s take
on Zorn’s other most famous group Naked City, possessing the same stop-start surf-punk-jazz
feel as that outfit, but filtered through Masada’s own distinctive lense. Sadly
both versions are perhaps the weakest things on the sets, but then, you can’t
have everything.
Even if you have every studio recording Masada ever made, you
would be well recommended to invest in some of the live albums, given the full
strength of playing, occasion and excitement that each is able to generate, and
just how much more full-bodied Greg Cohen’s bass is in a live context. But even
if you already own every other live recording, ‘Live At Tonic 2001’ still
offers something more - when the final piece here comes to an end you can feel
the palpable euphoria emenating from the stage. And that is something you want
to experience.
*****
No comments:
Post a Comment