Film Works V: Tears Of Ecstasy [Soundtrack]

Film Works V: Tears Of Ecstasy [Soundtrack]

ASIN: B000003YUF

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
When John Zorn was approached to produce a soundtrack for Japanese filmmaker Hiroyuki Oki's Tears of Ecstasy, he was given only one requirement: the music had to be divided into 60 one-minute segments. As for style and substance, Zorn and company, including Robert Quine and Marc Ribot on guitars and Cyro Baptista on percussion, were allowed to experiment without limitation. The resulting stroboscopic soundtrack rips through a multitude of genres. Sleek jazz and lonesome Western instrumentals butt up against trash-compactor noise that in turn sits adjacent to the nocturnal clicking of robotic crickets. This pastiche of mutated melodies becomes a flawless example of premeditated musical surgery operating out of control. --Michael Woodring

Tracks:

Factor
Intercept
Lemma
Root
Net
Lie Group
Reduction
Trisectrix of Maclaurin
Interpolation
Gradients
Random Walk
Cusp
Region
Block
Prediction
Concordance
Modulus
Addition
Ergodicity
Prism
Mean Difference
Likelihood
Deviation
Curl
Probable Error
Limit
Youden Square
Tensor
Martingale
Tantochrone
Witchof Agnesi
Rank
Quadrature
Discriminant
Rose Curve
Lituus
Involute
Catearies
Folium
Edge Train
Ruled Suface
Slope
Cluster
Spiral
Octal
Cissord of Diocles
Arc
Pole

Amazon.com

When John Zorn was approached to produce a soundtrack for Japanese filmmaker Hiroyuki Oki's Tears of Ecstasy, he was given only one requirement: the music had to be divided into 60 one-minute segments. As for style and substance, Zorn and company, including Robert Quine and Marc Ribot on guitars and Cyro Baptista on percussion, were allowed to experiment without limitation. The resulting stroboscopic soundtrack rips through a multitude of genres. Sleek jazz and lonesome Western instrumentals butt up against trash-compactor noise that in turn sits adjacent to the nocturnal clicking of robotic crickets. This pastiche of mutated melodies becomes a flawless example of premeditated musical surgery operating out of control. --Michael Woodring

Customer Reviews:

Naked City-lite........2005-12-20

One of the most varied soundtracks in John Zorn's "Filmworks" series, "Filmworks V: Tears of Ecstacy" was recorded for a Japanese movie that seemed to be concerned with conceptual filmmaking-- the movie consisted of roughly sixty one minute sections for which Zorn was asked to provide music for in a rather limited timeframe. Zorn (performing on alto sax, prepared piano and samples) is joined by Marc Ribot (guitar), Robert Quine (guitar) and Cyro Baptista (percussion) and for each of the one minute or so tracks (there's 48 of them on the disc), different genres or genre alloys are explored.

So what separates this from Naked City? It's not as carefully planned, that's clear. The music itself is a lot of fun, everything from smokey blues ("Youden Square") to blasts of metal noise ("Cusp") and in between are covered, but it's all quite loose. It's clear it was put together in a hurry, and while the pieces are fun and effective, they by-and-large lack the depth that the Naked City pieces have.

Nonetheless, it's a decent record. If you're really craving more Naked City, this might be a good coda, and if you're into Zorn's film composition, this is a worthwhile endeavor, but by-and-large it's less essential then many other soundtrack pieces.

More fun than a barrel of... what?.......2001-02-26

There's an incredible number of cuts on this disc. Almost all run around a minute long, and feature some of the finest of Zorn's longtime collaborators making very strange, very playful sounds with him in the studio -- experimenting, bringing in unusual instruments, making noise, making music. It's incredibly varied and delightful stuff; the film it's a soundtrack for is apparently a Japanese porno about extraterrestrials with a sexual fetish I won't detail here (since my previous review of this disc seems not to have made it past the editors). I suspect everyone involved had a hoot making it, and it certainly transfers onto the listener: this album is A LOT of fun, and my favorite FILMWORKS release.

Jazz Music:

Jazz Music

Jazz Music