The packaging
Simple really...a pink striped digipak. Recording information, track listing, and a calender of September 2003.
The music
A little background is in order.
September 2003 was the month of John Zorn’s 50th birthday. To celebrate, each day he did two shows with his various projects. John Zorn is a peculiar fellow...someone once wrote “I’d say he plays everything but the kitchen sink, but he uses that too.”
Avant Garde is generally used. Some of his music is fairly straightforward classical arrangements (Masada), some is occasionally brutally heavy jazz/metal (Naked City), sometimes he does soundtrack music to movies that don’t exist, or he covers real soundtrack music, sometimes he does love songs, sometimes traditional Jewish folk songs...much of his music can be described as cartoon music.
Cartoon music interested Zorn as a youth because you can sit and watch a cartoon and enjoy the music and visuals...but when you remove the visuals, the music makes no sense.
Hemophiliac is one of Zorn’s projects that feature him on the alto saxophone, Ikue Mori doing electronics, and Mike Patton providing vocals.
This is not like Faith No More or Mr. Bungle. This is more like Mike Patton’s solo albums. Imagine noise...screeching saxophones, random electronic noise, and a guy grunting. That’s what this is. It’s strange, it’s weird, it’s “audio art” I suppose.
I really can't emphasize this more...it's noise. It's three people on stage together, making noise...there's no "songs" in the traditional sense. There's no beat nor is there any rhythym. It's chaos. Some of the "noise" is static, some of it sounds like your alarm clock, or a whistle, or a piano being played backwards.
What is it, though? I don’t know. I can tell you it's 47 minutes of noise that's definitely not for everyone. At times it seems completely random but then it sounds to cohesive...like they know what they’re doing...they know what’s about to come, they know what they just did and they could recreate it 100 times in a row if asked.
Some of the songs are chaotic, but then you have something like track five , which as far as I can tell is called “<<-^->>”, and it sort of sounds like you’re out in the wilderness, lost wandering aimlessly, yet in the distance you can here a train whistle...
That is one of the main reasons I enjoy this sort of things...I can put this on, and I can just picture something...a situation, or a story, or a picture comes to mind. When you visit an art gallery, many people stop and stare at paintings and think “what is going on in this.” That is what this is. Abstract, strange, peculiar, but still curious.
It’s interesting, it’s unique and I’m a fan of it. It’s also not something I listen to often. This isn’t road trip music...you don’t put this on to relax, you don’t put it on to study to, but you do put it on if you’re in a strange mood, or if you’re pissed at something, or if you want some strange background noise, or if you just want something different.
The Hemophiliac studio album is a sold out double disc that runs over $100 on eBay. My advice is to pick this up instead.
I cannot genuinely say “go get this” as this really isn’t generally enjoyable to the majority of people, but if you want something strange, artsy, as well as intentionally and obnoxiously pretentious, then go for it.
