Spillane (album)

Spillane
Studio album by
Released1987
RecordedJune–August 1986, June & September 1987 at Radio City Studios, New York, NY; Russian Hill Recording, San Francisco, CA and Metal Box Studio, Tokyo, Japan
GenreAvant-garde
Length54:01
LabelElektra Nonesuch
ProducerJohn Zorn, David Breskin
John Zorn chronology
Cobra
(1987)
Spillane
(1987)
News for Lulu
(1988)

Spillane is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn, composed of three "file-card pieces", as well as a work for voice, string quartet and turntables.

It is named after mystery writer Mickey Spillane, whose novels featuring detective Mike Hammer provided the basis for the album's title track. Zorn wrote Spillane on a series of index cards, each containing an outline or instruction for the musicians that was intended to evoke scenes from one of Spillane's novels. One card states: "Scene of the crime #1 -- high harp harmonics, basses and trombone drone, guitar sonorities, sounds of water dripping and narration on top."[1] Thus, the musicians are not given traditional sheet music, but a series of cues or outlines that encourage improvisation.

Zorn later released the composition "Spillane" on the compilation album Godard/Spillane (1999).

  1. ^ John Bracket. Some notes on John Zorn's Cobra. American Music, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring 2010), pp. 44-75