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Jerusalem: Tales Outside the Framework of Orthodoxy

Jerusalem: Tales Outside the Framework of Orthodoxy

a review by Stephen Fruitman of
release format Jerusalem: Tales Outside the Framework of Orthodoxy by Random Inc (CD Album)

text

Inside the handsome booklet tucked into the slipcover housing this disc by Random Inc. (aka Sebastian Meissner) is a photograph of a wall separating Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem. This image of this wall serves as a musical metaphor which also divides the sounds featured on this outstanding conceptual work into two long suites. Readers hardly need to be reminded of the fact that Jerusalem is a city mainly inhabited by two groups of people which circumstances have dictated must live queasily side-by-side, constantly teetering on the precipice of disaster and vulnerable to the whims of zealots and crassly scheming politicians on both sides.

Meissner takes recordings from Jewish and Arabic archives and belabours them with his Powerbook, offering up a stark, pointillist and deliberately confusing portrait of Jerusalemite culture over the course of 28 abstract miniatures. The two suites, which perhaps could be titled 'Al-Quds' and 'Yerushalaim', as indicated by the double-sided slipcover, were originally planned to be released each on its own 3" disc, until costs proved prohibitive. The first fourteen cuts process Muslim Arabic material and, after two minutes of ambient silence representing the aforementioned wall, the second set journeys into the Jewish audio world, including some samples identifiable as having been culled from John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensemble recordings. As the late, great poet of Jerusalem, Yehuda Amichai (who is quoted extensively in the booklet), wrote, "The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams/Like the air over industrial cities/It's hard to breathe." Random, Inc.'s CD washes over these skies fraught with history like a refreshing spring rain though, unfortunately, neither rain nor sound can tear down physical or mental walls. Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 00:00, 25 Apr 2001