Collected Works (The Complete Studio Recordings 1991-1994)

Artist: Painkiller
Label: Tzadik
Category: Music

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Format: Box set
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 4

UPC: 702397731726
EAN: 0702397731726
ASIN: B000003YUO

Release Date: 1998-02-17

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Listmania:

Jam'n'shoes
Bands that truly are anti-mainstream
Works of Utter Madness
John Zorn---he would hate this!
Albums I Couldn't Live without
Tower of Godflesh
The Magic of John Zorn's TZADIK in my CD collection (part I)
Music for Emilie
Subsonic Stool Softeners from Mick Harris
HOW TO DIE WITH DECENT MUSIC PLAYING

Tracks:

Scud Attack
Deadly Obstacle Collage
Damage To The Mask
Guts Of A Virgin
Handjob
Portent
Hostage
Lathe Of God
Dr. Phibes
Purgatory Of Fiery Vulvas
Warhead
Devil's Eye
Tortured Souls
One-Eyed Pessary
Trailmarker
Blackhole Dub
Buried Secrets
The Ladder
Executioner
Black Chamber
Skinned
The Toll
Unlisted

Tracks:

Parish Of Tama (Ossuary Dub)
Morning Of Balachaturdasi
Pashupatinath

Tracks:

Pashupatinath (Ambient)
Parish Of Tama (Ambient)

Tracks:

Gandhamadana
Vaidurya
Satapitaka
Bodkyithangga
Black Bile/Yellow Bile/Blue Bile/Crimson Bile/Ivory Bile

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The Gift

Customer Reviews:

mastery!.......2006-09-04

Painkiller is John Zorn (saxophone, vocals), Bill Laswell (bass) and Mick Harris (drums, vocals). Without the name, the makeup of the trio sounds more like the recipe for a lounge act, any place the smoke will be thick and people are going to hum along to "Misty," no matter how many times they've already heard it.

Throw in the band's name, though, and you have improvisational thrash tinged with ambient grooves and a boatload of primal screaming, not to mention the occasional lick of dub reggae. The music is full and deep and will toss you around in a matter of seconds (as is the case with "Handjob," "Purgatory of Fiery Vulvas" and "Trailmarker," which altogether total not even a minute's worth of music) or quell you with twenty minutes of oceanic groove (as in "Pashupatinath (Ambient)"). Sometimes, Painkiller gives you both in the same song.

Known in their time mostly through those in the know up in New York City (and by some very lucky crowds in Japan), Painkiller was a three-year effort that started in 1991. They released four recordings: the EPs Guts of a Virgin and Buried Secrets, the two-album Execution Ground and a live recording from Osaka, which graced only select stores in Japan. In continual reverence to John Zorn, their executive producer, the Tzadik label has released all four recordings and a bonus track in a four-disc package amply titled Painkiller: the Complete Studio Recordings 1991-1994 (Tzadik has been rereleasing many of John Zorn's older works, from his first recordings of 1973 to his film scores and a previously unavailable--in America, at least--recording from his band Naked City).

Painkiller was a creation of three icons of underground music. Mick Harris was the original whirlwind of percussion behind Napalm Death; John Zorn has been blowing saxophone (and bird whistles and kazoos and pots and pans and vacuum cleaner hoses...) in New York City since the 1970's; and Bill Laswell is the master ear behind such bands as Praxis (featuring Funkadelic veterans Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell) and Material (featuring everyone in the world at some point of the band's continued reincarnations, including Whitney Houston). The idea was to see if improvisation could make a crowd mosh (and mosh they did). Perhaps another idea was to explore the sounds of a band without lead guitar, a must to your typical rockers.

Each member of the trio brought to the table his own talent and extraordinary magic. Mick Harris brought the sheer power a drum kit could offer, the reality that there could be but one man, a mere pair of arms and feet, behind an insane flurry of percussive attacks and cymbal crashings. Also, he brought that primal wail that sent the early recordings of Napalm Death (the days of thirty-minute albums graced by forty or more songs) to their psychomaniac height. John Zorn brought the virtuosity of saxophone--the ability to make the most extraordinary range of sounds, from wails and squeals to the kind of breathy riffs film noire ran their credits in front of. He brought the ability of quick-change, the precision of switching from a steady, droning groove to high pitch mayhem in the space of a breath (more often switching tempos in the same breath, having been inspired by Carl Stalling and his scores to Warner Brothers cartoons). John Zorn also brought the ability to play along to anything. Soul, ska, bebop, hip-hop, Beach Boys or Dead Boys, Zorn could find a way to slip in some saxophone and never let it sound out of place.

The real crux of this band, though, was Bill Laswell. Only he could round out the efforts of this spectrum of influence. His name has held the producer's spot on albums from the Ramones and Mephiskapholes to the Japanese drumming band Kodo and jazz great Pharaoh Sanders. A Bill Laswell production distinguishes itself not for sounding like every other Bill Laswell production (like, for instance, the efforts of Bob Rock or the David Bowie influence on Iggy Pop) but for not sounding like any other Bill Laswell production. John Zorn often holds the spotlight in Painkiller with his high trills and lung-bursting blasts, and Mick Harris may mesmerize with his drum rolls that make Alex van Halen's beats as tedious as a pair of shrunken old dams operating a crusty red Bonneville, but it's Laswell that maintains Painkiller through its plethora of sounds. No matter if it's the unremitting noise of "Damage to the Mask" or the sine wave of crescendo and liquid slide in "Parish of Tama," Bill Laswell drives the atmosphere with a steady foundation of bass--nothing too fancy, but always just right.

In all, the Painkiller complete recordings will give you a full range of experience, offerings selections for all tastes--a lot of the short, hard material lies in wait on one disc, while the more ambient tracks sit on another, a considerate allowance for those whose moods may shift in trying to decide what to listen to. The dynamic of having all three performers keeps things from completely giving themselves over to, say, the purist speed-dementia of Mick Harris or the disparate noise that can too often grace a lot of John Zorn's solitary efforts. We never even sink fully to the depths of Bill Laswell's thalassic ambient whalesong, the likes of which can be found on the Subharmonic label with such notaries as Jah Wobble and the California mutant guitarist Buckethead, the kind of ambient that would make Brian Eno look like a speed freak. Just as any one sound seems to be taking over, it is instantly thwarted by another in a very refreshing way. The mega-quick, three-second "Trailmarker" is rounded out right afterward by the bass-heavy "Blackhole Dub."

But the real gems by far are found in selections from Execution Ground. Rather than hit us with several songs, each sporting its own musical style, as in the Guts of a Virgin and Buried Secrets EPs, Execution Ground offers fourteen to sixteen minute assaults that take us through every mood of the ensemble. Zorn's peals on the sax meld slowly into a cascade of screams by Mick Harris, moving then so slowly into the subconscious (and subaural) thumps of Bill Laswell, and we come to an end strangely pacifying and complete. This was indeed the height of their artform, and their live disc reinforces that: the audience sounds both mesmerized and enraged. Slowly, oh so slowly, we have been breaking down the categories of music and find it harder and harder to call one thing 'rock' while we call another thing 'alternative' or 'pop.' Painkiller offers us music that transcends all--slow and fast, hard and soft, Painkiller offers up music worth a serious listen.

Hmmm....not bad.......2006-03-09

Now this is not a completely satisfying box set. Do not get me wrong there is some really great stuff on here. the mix of heavy metal and jazz is well done. I preferred Naked City however but even that concept wore thin after a few records. Here it is abit of the same. Ok the players are exceptional and there are some gems but...

Grindcore, dub and everything in between........2005-11-17

In the late '80s, John Zorn developed a fascination with hardcore death metal and grindcore. Adding bands like Napalm Death to his endless list of influences. Zorn at some point met Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris, and the two discussed collaborating. The net result of this was Painkiller, with the addition of bassist Bill Laswell.

Describing Painkiller is a bit difficult-- Zorn and Harris' overt grindcore sound blends remarkably well with dub bass courtesy of Laswell-- the band recorded three albums-- "Guts of a Virgin" and "Buried Secrets" and "Execution Ground". All of these along with an ambient remix of "Execution Ground" and a live show are gathered into this boxed set, "Collected Works".

"Guts of a Virgin" and "Buried Secrets" (making up the first disc) follow pretty much the same formula-- the band rails away, loud, heavy, and propolsive-- Laswell finds oddball grooves, Harris pounds relentlessly, and Zorn screeches over the top. The music is exciting, powerful and engaging, but you really have to be in the right frame of mind to hear it because it is relentless in its approach. Sometimes it excels enormously (opener "Scud Attack", frantic "Guts of a Virgin" and "Skinned" or Zorn explosion "Hostage"), sometimes it gets a bit more experimental which is intriguing, particularly on "Buried Secrets"-- tracks like "Blackhole Dub" and "Black Chamber" find Laswell pushing the grooves in somewhat different directions. Guest performances by Justin Broadrick and G.G. Green (both of Godflesh) on a pair of tracks help provide some more intrigue to those pieces-- "Buried Secrets" is a guitar effects workout and "The Toll" is morbid and bleak (and fantastic). The final cut on the disc, "Marianne", is from an album by vocalist Makigami Koichi. The band with Koichi on vocal and Haino Keiji on guitar, follows much the same formula, also in Keiji, Zorn has a guitarist willing to match his screeches and it makes for an intriguing pairing. Add to this Koichi's much more patient and relaxed vocal delivery, and certainly the cut is one of the most unique on the record.

"Execution Ground" paints a drastically different picture-- the same fierce improvs and explosive performances are present, but rather than brief tracks, it sounds as if Laswell mixed several pieces together with some ambient tape to form more coherent and extended statements. The results-- the music is a bit more laid back (a bit mind you, it's not exactly calm and patient), a more overt dub sound comes out, and it's much more produced and arranged-- effects processing, instruments fading in and out, volume swells, and so on. While it makes for a more coherent statement, it does lack that frantic energy that the earlier records had. The music is really quite unlike anything else and needs to be heard to make sense, "Pashupatinath" is the standout, encompassing an almost Naked City-like variance in sounds and themes, with Zorn adding a West coast jazz sensibility to the dub and grindcore sounds. If production made "Execution Ground" unique, then it stands to follow that ambient remixes would only continue that trend. What results is something totally unexpected-- "Execution Ground" is reduced virtually to samples for Laswell, who by and large creates a music that is bleak and haunting, using ambient sound, noise, and staggered instrumental presence to build a sense of foreboding. It's highly enjoyable, albeit not what you'll be looking for if you were expecting a grindcore workout.

The final disc, "Live in Osaka", is to my mind the gem of the set-- like many Zorn projects, Painkiller shines live. The music loses some of its heaviness but does not tame a bit-- four pieces are performed by the band, each is far more extended than the album cuts an has a weird jam-band/grindcore feel to it that, while I'm incapable of explaining it, benefits the material. On the last track with the band, Yamatsuka Eye of the Boredoms joins in to add some madness, and Eye and Zorn duet for an encore.

All in all, it's a pretty impressive set, there's a lot of material, I suspect not all of it is going to be to everyone's liking, but it's a good value for the money. Recommended.

Shrieks and whispers and rolling thunder.......2003-12-06

Although this box set lives up to its reputation (and then some), it's a disappointing collection of music. Painkiller is a very heavy, shrill band. Over the course of four CDs, three guys improvise an interesting hybrid of hardcore jazz and heavy metal: John Zorn on alto sax, Mick Harris on drums, and Bill Laswell on bass. The first two EPs (squeezed together on to one disc) are formless instrumentals of noise. Each song has a random length and a colorful title. These two EPs (Guts of a Virgin and Buried Secrets) don't have much going for them. They stop and start, they shriek, and in the end you get a little bit bored.

Their third recording, Execution Ground (the second disc here) is a major improvement. It sounds like Laswell took the first two EPs and remixed them, blending ambient soundscapes into the jackhammering improvisation. There are three songs, each about 15 minutes long, that drone and rumble along. The third disc in this set is an ambient remix of Execution Ground. The noise is kept to a minimum while wind and distant echoing screams take over. It's very creepy and beautiful. It is, by far, the best part of this set.

The fourth and final disc is a live album. It sounds just like Execution Ground. On the final tracks, the great Yamatsuka Eye joins in. Eye howls like the Tasmanian Devil along with Zorn's screeching saxophone. I've heard this disc over and over, waiting for it to grow on me, but it never did. It's boring.

It's hard to recommend the Collected Works to anyone who hasn't already heard (and loved) Painkiller. The idea behind the band --- three musicians improvising the noisiest music of all time --- is a great idea. But the result is less than expected. Too much of this music is an indulgence that leaves you scratching your head. The high points (discs 2 and 3) are impressive, but not enough to justify buying the whole set.

SOUND IN AN AGE OF TERRORISM.......2003-07-25

Improvisational music's currrent Dark Magus is found here
in a amplified trio that includes alto sax, bass and drums. How to describe Zorn's playing here? Imagine if a velociraptor somehow was an alto saxophone virtuoso-and was hunting for his next kill! Bill Laswell's generous use of his weapons of bass destruction create the general mood and space of each piece while Harris's drums serve to raise or lower the general panic level. I'm not put off by noise but I do marvel at how HARD these guys work at it. Someone might compose a piece about BILE,
But five BILE(s) in 5 different colors?! These recordings spill the "gutbucket" back into Jazz but in a visceral,FORENSIC sense.
The use of dub techniques and echoes remind us that violence (most of which occurs on disc one) may reverberate longer in our lives than we think. P.S. Better than Naked City because more of Zorn's own brilliant playing over extended jams. Six Stars!!!

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