Release Date: 2009
Label: Tzadik
Tzadik releases are always a gamble. They range anywhere from mindblowing to played out and cliché, from gripping and powerful to simply boring. Despite the erratic quality control found on their releases, John Zorn’s label never seems to fail to put out at least a solid handful of great releases each year. Roberto Rodriguez’s The First Basket is one of the albums that will rank among the cream of Tzadik’s 2009 crop. Released as a part of the Radical Jewish Culture series, The First Basket takes a klezmer base and filters it through numerous genres across its 30 (mostly brief) tracks.
The best songs on the album are the ones where Rodriguez manages to fit klezmer to these styles such that the result feels natural. For example, the excellent “Euro Trash Jewish Hoops” combines a gorgeous melody to a simple yet effective electronic beat. It makes perfect sense. After all, klezmer is dance music at heart, and the beat highlights that aspect. Equally intriguing is “Kosher Rasta,” which is exactly what the title suggests, and which works better than you’d imagine.
The rest of the album is absolutely littered with highlights, such as the pretty much straight klezmer “Philadelphia Spahs,” which pushes the tempo and stands as one of the most exciting pieces of music on the album. Of course, with 30 tracks, there are some missteps, but the only one that’s bad enough to be worth noting is “Ode to Ozzie Perry.” Like “Euro Trash Jewish Hoops” and “Kosher Rasta,” this song runs klezmer through another genre, in this case noise rock. Unlike those two tracks, however, where the two competing genres played off one another, emphasizing each other’s strengths, on “Ode to Ozzie Perry,” the genres simply don’t mesh whatsoever. The distortion from the noise rock aspect clouds the beauty that is such an integral part of klezmer, but doesn’t do anything spectacular in order to negate that effect.
The First Basket is the soundtrack to a film about Jews playing basketball in New York. I will probably never see this film, so I lack that aspect of context for this music. It’s safe to say, though, that Roberto Rodriguez has composed music that stands fully on its own merits with The First Basket. It’s easily accessible, but still manages to be a grower. Most of all, it’s simply a gorgeous, often brilliant album full of both excitement and charm.
-Pnoom
No comments:
Post a Comment