Music: Once Upon a Time in America

Who says modern music has to be unpleasant? As the 20th century winds down, the joyous, freewheeling eclecticism that has long marked American music is flourishing more strongly than ever. Some challenging releases prove the point:

PETER GORDON: Innocent (CBS). JOHN ZORN: The Big Gundown: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone (Nonesuch/Icon). Not for the squeamish -- or at least not for those who think serious music is something best carried on quietly by consenting adults in the privacy of a concert hall. Gordon, 35, and Zorn, 33, are both members of Manhattan's explosive avant-garde art-rock scene, reveling in hot-wired Farfisas, electric guitars, saxophones and synthesizers. But, as David Byrne says, this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around. Gordon's Innocent, a collection of ten tracks, has the electrified, hypnotic, postminimalist drive familiar to mainstream audiences from the Talking Heads, but with a rougher, anarchic bite. Indeed, the album is a Who's Who of the downtown crowd: one song, The Day the Devil Comes to Getcha, has words by Laurie Anderson, and supporting musicians include Percussionist David Van Tieghem. Innocent is a walk on the wild Lower East Side, a long way from Lincoln Center.

Zorn's Big Gundown strolls even farther afield for inspiration, to the spaghetti-western Italy of Composer Ennio Morricone and beyond. Zorn and his ensemble build up huge soundscapes of wailing guitars (a Morricone trademark in his scores for Director Sergio Leone) and screaming saxes, vamping freestyle on the thinnest of musical motives from such films as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Burglars. Not for every taste, to be sure. Call it The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but check it out.

THE KRONOS QUARTET (Nonesuch). The San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet (Violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, Violist Hank Dutt and Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud) looks like a new-wave band and plays like an iconoclast's image-busting dream come to fiddling life. This disk offers the Balinese- influenced String Quartet No. 8 by the idiosyncratic Australian Peter Sculthorpe, the introspective Quartet No. 3 by conservative Finnish Composer Aulis Sallinen, Philip Glass's somber, eight-minute Company, the rarely heard 1942 String Quartet by expatriate American Conlon Nancarrow and, as an encore, an arrangement of Rock Guitarist Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. Talk about eclectic.

Punk attire aside, the Kronos can really play. Somewhat surprisingly, the highlight is the Nancarrow, a straightforward, approachable, quasi- Bar-tokian work in three movements. It predates Nancarrow's dense, mind-boggling, rhythmic experiments in his Mexico City studio with the player piano, which later became his chosen medium of expression. Emotionally stirring, the piece deserves wider currency. And the swooping, sliding, fuzz-toned Purple Haze must be as close as a string quartet is likely to come to playing acid rock at the Fillmore. Jimi was never like this. Can Janis be far behind?