JOHN ZORN – Dreamachines – CD – TZ8308

Dreamachines marks the third part of a trilogy that started with the multi-part suite Interzone in 2010, and was followed by Nova Express a year later. Dreamachines continues Nova Express because it makes use of the same band – John Medeski (p), Trevor Dunn (b), Kenny Wollesen (vib), and Joey Baron (dr) – and it is the jazziest one of this bundle of albums. The first track, “Psychic Conspirators”, presents Wollesen gone mad in front of a relentless rhythm section, like an elaborate Naked City segment that also refers back to an early work like Spillane. The track looks like a typical Burroughs routine, it is a surreal composition which grows, expands, implodes and folds in on itself. “Gît-Le-Couer” (the name of the hotel in which Gysin and Burroughs lived in Paris, which went down in history as the so-called Beat Hotel) is another example of Zorn’s processing of the cut-up technique: it starts very relaxed breathing the cliché intellectual Paris atmosphere of the 1960 before it takes a turn to a typical spooky Dreamers track and then goes back to where it started off. The highlights are “1001 Nights in Marrakech” with its Arabian influence and its dark piano riff and the psychedelic sparkling title track, both having strong soundtrack qualities. Great album, indeed.

Martin Schray / The Free Jazz Collective