Frammenti Del Sappho

I can go for long stretches of time without listening to John Zorn, without even thinking about him & them something happens & I feel like I live in John Zorn world again. It's a world in which Hank Mancini skips through the park holding hands with a cancerous larynx. But it's also a world of pure, dumb, pancake-eating beauty. The track "Frammenti Del Sappho" from his Mysterium release from last year has been on repeat for me for the last two hours. The singers on this piece push past Schoenberg-like tonalities to points where their dissonance makes my eyes water. But it has just enough moments of traditional, soothing harmonics & goofy intonations to make me grip my seat, cleanch my jaw & persevere. And then worn out, heart thumping, I replay the track & go through it all again. Zorn treks into the dark spots of pleasure in his music, but he always leads a breadcrumb trail for the listener.