The Moonchild Trio

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The Moonchild Trio
Moonchild Trio live
Moonchild Trio live
General information
origin United States
Genre (s) Jazzcore · experimental music
founding 2006
Founding members
John anger
Mike Patton
Trevor Dunn
Joey Baron

The Moonchild Trio is a supergroup founded by John Zorn in 2006 , which is increasingly dedicated to jazzcore . The band project planned since 2003 consists of Mike Patton , Trevor Dunn and Joey Baron .

Supergroup

All members have previously worked for and with John Zorn on various projects and have also been involved in their own bands and with other popular musicians as studio and live musicians. Patton and Dunn had Mr. Bungle's debut album produced by Zorn and were popular alongside Mr. Bungle through Fantômas, among others . All three musicians appeared in John Zorn's Masa series. Baron also worked with Tim Berne and Tony Bennett , Dunn for example with Brian Welch and Sean Lennon and Patton with Björk , Lovage , Sepultura and, among many others, the more than consistent singer of the band Faith No More .

Band structure

The band consists of the three musicians Trevor Dunn , Joey Baron and Mike Patton . Dunn on bass and Baron on drums form a rhythm section , while Patton acts as the band's singer, other musicians such as other singers, guitarists or saxophonists only appear as guest musicians and are not an integral part of the band.

As a regularly returning guest musician, the guitarist Marc Ribot contributed to several productions. Even John Medeski was instrumental in the formation of the sixth album of the project, Templars - In Sacred Blood involved. John Zorn , who brought the musicians together through his work as composer and conductor, is considered the band leader and artistic head of the group. A circumstance that is reinforced by the marketing of the albums as John Zorn products, with the casual mention of the musicians or of The Moonchild Trio or The Moonchild Band. As a result, the musicians are ultimately only the presenting band, whose line-up is, however, essentially fixed.

Stylistic idea and implementation

Zorn added an explanatory text to the release of the first project album Moonchild (Songs without words) , which was printed on the CD's digipack. Here Zorn refers to influences from the surrealist Antonin Artaud , the conductor and composer of experimental music Edgard Varèse and the occultist Aleister Crowley . Zorn names the underlying idea of ​​the project with the words:

"Combining the hypnotic intensity of ritual (composition) the spontaneity of magick (improvisation) and in a modern musical format (rock)."

"Combining the hypnotic intensity of ritual (composition) and the spontaneity of magic (improvisation) in a format of modern music (rock)."

- John Zorn

For this idea, Zorn wanted to radicalize the musical creation process from consultation and testing and let the band's works emerge in a kind of jam session. For the creation of such a work, Zorn gives a composed piece and conducts it, which means that the musicians have to react and improvise . The interaction and communication between those involved is particularly important here. Which is why Zorn also describes the creation process as a special moment, which corresponds to the desired combination of ritual and magic.

A conceptual idea that is simplified by reducing the musicians to bass, drums and wordless singing. All musicians change their function differently from part of the rhythm section to the soloist and vice versa. Particular attention in many reviews is given to the continuous scat singing , which alternates between the various forms of guttural singing , pig squeals and variants of speaking and regular singing and occasionally uses elements of overtone and undertone singing .

Since Patton cannot read the usual notations , Zorn plays the written notes for him, which Patton then records in a notation that is understandable and reproducible for him.

history

The actual project was founded by Zorn to realize an opera by theater director Richard Foreman and his Ontological-Hysteric Theater. However, the desired music for the opera was only created on the second album Astronome: A Night At The Opera , in 2006 in the same year as the debut album Moonchild: Songs Without Words . With the third album Six Litanies For Heliogabalus , the band began to involve guest musicians in the creative process in 2007. In addition to John Zorn on alto saxophone , Ikue Mori with keyboard and sampling , Jamie Saft on organ and the small choir made up of Martha Cluver, Abby Fischer and Kirsten Soller contributed to the album. On the following albums The Crucible 2008 and Ipsissimus 2010 John Zorn and Marc Ribot worked as guest musicians, in 2012 John Medeski worked on the recording of Templars - In Sacred Blood . For The Crucible , Zorn also broke with the idea of ​​completely wordless singing and sprinkled some names of angels as fragments into the otherwise wordless singing.

Discography

  • 2006: Moonchild (Songs without Words) ( Tzadik )
  • 2006: Astronomers (Tzadik)
  • 2007: Six Litanies for Heliogabalus (Tzadik)
  • 2008: The Crucible (Tzadik)
  • 2010: Ipsissimus (Tzadik)
  • 2012: Templars - In Sacred Blood (Tzadik)
  • 2014: The Last Judgment (Tzadik)

Individual evidence

  1. Label information for Moonchild (accessed September 30, 2010)
  2. Label information on astronomers (accessed on September 30, 2010)
  3. a b John Zorn: Moonchild (Songs without Words), Digipack. Tzadik TZ7357. 2006.
  4. Review of Moonchild on MetalStorm (accessed October 7, 2010)
  5. Concert review from 2007 by Jazzsick (accessed on October 7, 2010)
  6. Review of Six Litanies for Heliogabalus on Metal.de (accessed October 7, 2010)
  7. BelieverMag.com: An Interview with Mike Patton. Retrieved June 12, 2020 .
  8. Article about the cooperation between Foreman and Zorn on Village Voice (accessed October 12, 2010)
  9. Label information on Six Litanies for Heliogabalus (accessed on September 30, 2010)
  10. Label information for The Crucible (accessed September 30, 2010)