American guitarist and composer Jon Madof is a veteran of Downtown New York’s Radical Jewish Culture scene, mentored and encouraged by John Zorn, who, at the time, led the first Masada quartet. Madof led the Jewish power trio Rashanim (with bassist-oud player Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz and drummer-percussionist Mathias Künzli) in the early 2000s, and the 10-piece Zion80, a horn-heavy klezmer-meets-Afrobeat band.
Madof returns with a new stripped-down power trio with bassist Yoshie Fruchter and drummer Nate Rappaport, and a new album, Netzach (Eternity in Hebrew), that offers a new blend of Jewish music, surf-rock twang, punk energy, and pyrotechnic fusion improvisation. The sound of this trio is heavier, oscillating between merciless, distorted Hendrixian acrobatics and Marc Ribot’s bluesy lyricism, but now spiced with refined orchestration. Zorn, who released Netzach on his label Tzadik’s eclectic Spectrum series, calls it «modern Jewish music at its raging best». The cover photo of a prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem was taken by Dutch photographer François «Frank» Scholten (1881-1942).
Madof sketches his musical influences by three dedications to musical heroes – Zorn («Invisible Alchemy»), incorporating Zorn’s Masada alchemical free jazz meets klezmer vocabulary; Nick Cave with the most beautiful and gentle ballad, «These Broken People Are the Messengers of God»; and guitarist Derek Trucks, with «A Pure Heart» that corresponds with Trucks’ Tedeschi Trucks Band soulful rhythm n’ blues. But Madof addresses far deeper issues in this album. He opens the album with «Achdut» (Unity in Hebrew), dedicated to American-Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, a peace activist supporting the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and dedicates the raging, painful «The Beautiful Six» to six young Israeli hostages who were murdered by Hamas terrorists.
Netzach is indeed raging, but also openly emotional and touching.
Eyal Hareuveni
Jon Madof (guitar), Yoshie Fruchter (bass), Nate Rappaport (drums), Moshe Sobol (percussion)
