Painkiller - Execution Ground, 1994
Lineup:
John Zorn – alto sax, vocals
Bill Laswell – bass, samples
Mick Harris – drums, samples, vocals
This album isn't even on the playlist because I've listened to it 4000 times and it's already the proud owner of a well cemented spot among my top 10 from the entire
Zornography.
So
Painkiller was
Zorn's
other jazzgrind band featuring grindcore patriarch
Mick Harris and the ever talented
Bill Laswell. After their first releases, just as
Naked City would, they went ahead and began to explore more sonic ground that in theory would seem so vastly far from what they'd already done.
Execution Ground is such a triumphant work that deserves to be heralded as such. It's also like a mad scientist, with its own agenda of shredding apart its test subjects/listeners to enact experimental methods of reassembling them.
I find dub music to be insanely versatile and cooperative with a wide variety of musical genres that might take very many Wikipedia links to connect. I could understand casual music people thinking it to be pretty samey or perhaps unexciting on its own, and I guess that's not entirely false, but I figure it functions much in the way ambient music does, working to swath the listener in a state of ever changing aural bliss and groove. It's truly amazing what dub music can do in any given context and never seem conspicuous.
So dub plays an important role, probably the most important in fact, in
Execution Ground. The album starts out blasting, the necessary listener demolition of course, before getting into it, but when it does the chill sets all over the album no matter any given moment's intensity or calm. Dub itself is all about nuance, and this album doesn't intend to prove otherwise. Whether it be loud or soft, spooky or genteel, insane or extra insane, it's a world of smooth.