Masada have hardly
been a slouch in recording terms, creating ten studio works and releasing a
strong fistful of live albums, with most coming from just one seven-year
stretch. And yet here, you would have thought impossibly, we have an out-takes
selection.
Made up of pieces
taken from eight separate sessions over a four year period, ‘Sanhedrin’
actually features pieces that for the most part have been released before, but
in a different take; and this being John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Greg Cohen and
Joey Baron, none of the takes here sound like the perhaps more familiar
versions. Rather each serves as a springboard for a very different
improvisation.
And that’s where
the fun lies; hearing how each of the players and the group as a whole vary in
each of their solos and interactions, even though they probably only just laid
down a different version only minutes before (or later).
It is in truth
though not an essential Masada work, due to the partially mish-mash feel that
this mix of different sessions over different times can give. It can feel like
a collection of off-cuts, but does work better than one or two of the
‘official’ Masada studio albums that themselves felt like albums of scraps.
Whether this is
for you depends on just how much Masada you already have and how much more you
want. If you absolutely must have everything, then this is a good compilation
that sits nicely alongside everything else. For anyone else it’s probably
preferable to ‘Dalet’ and ‘Zayin’, the fourth and seventh studio volumes, but
you would easily be better served by getting every other studio and live
release by this stellar group before you invest in ‘Sanhedrin’. As a collection
of its type though, its standard is very high and should not be dismissed as
just a barrel-scraping exercise like many similar recordings of this ilk
frequently, yet justifiably, are.
****
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