First Recordings 1973

Reception

The Allmusic review by Stacia Proefrock awarded the album 3½ stars noting that "Zorn calls this collection "the craziest stuff I've ever done" and he could be right, with the possible exception of the Painkiller albums, which are perhaps just louder rather than crazier. That said, this work is, predictably, not Zorn's best, but it holds value for fans as an embryonic example of his innovation and style". Guy Peters stated "It's occasionally interesting to hear Zorn the adolescent at work, while some of the pieces show that his more fleshed-out efforts from a decade later were already waiting to pop up from below the surface. However, more than anything else, the album contains almost 80 minutes of half-assed experiments by a young artist playing with radical ideas and struggling to find an identity, yet failing to make a lasting impression. As such, the release of First Recordings 1973 is a vanity project, unless you're willing to go along, in which case it might be good for a few laughs (as Zorn suggests). File under "sounds for people that are fed up with music"".

Track listing

1. "Mikhail Zoetrope" (1974): Act I - 22:13
2. "Mikhail Zoetrope" (1974): Act II - 13:30
3. "Mikhail Zoetrope" (1974): Act III - 11:00
4. "Conquest of Mexico" (1973): Part 1 Warning Signs - 7:45
5. "Conquest of Mexico (1973): Part 2 Confession - 3:39
6. "Conquest of Mexico" (1973): Part 3 Convulsions/Abdication - 3:56
7. "Wind Ko/La" (1973) - 3:04
8. "Automata of Al-Jazari" (1974) - 1:16
9. "Variations on a Theme by Albert Ayler" (1973) - 11:14

Personnel