Masada Rock

AMG Review of Masada Rock

Sean Westergaard
All Music Guide

Masada Rock is a collection of ten previously unrecorded songs from the Masada songbook as performed by Jon Madof's Rashanim trio with Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz on bass and Mathias Kunzli on drums in addition to Madof's guitar. The tunes range stylistically from some sort of ethnic surf music to punk jazz to beautiful acoustic pieces. Marc Ribot guests on a couple tunes, contributing electric guitar to "Bahir," and the lovely "Shadrakh" has some marvelous guitar interplay with both players on classical guitar. "Chorek" is a knotty rocker with plenty of distortion, and "Zemanim" actually features more distortion. Blumenkranz adds oud with some acoustic guitar by Madof on "Ahavah" and the set closes on a gentle note with "Terumah" (perhaps the album highlight), which also has oud, acoustic slide guitar, and jaw harp. A wide ranging program to be sure, but very well done.