Black Box - 20th Anniversary Edition: Torture Garden / Leng Tch'e
This two-CD set was first released by John Zorn in Japan in the early 1990s. It couldn't be sold in the United States because of the cover art, now concealed within theBlack Box. These are Zorn's most horrific inspirations--Torture Gardenincited by the images of Japanese sadomasochist pornography contained herein,Leng Tch'eby photographs of a Chinese public execution involving extended torture. A key part of Zorn's aesthetic is to create a musical methodology that matches his subject matter, or, conversely, to find a subject that matches his compositional methods. Like Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, William S. Burrough's cut-up method, or the cutting and pasting of collage, Zorn's methods mimic violence, creating new forms out of the torture and destruction of the old.Torture GardenandLeng Tch'eare, literally, the short and the long of it.Torture Gardenconsists of 42 tracks, the longest of which is a minute and 14 seconds, the shortest a scant 10 seconds. Musical genres are literally cut up and stuck together, snippets of free jazz, lounge, country and western, pop (ancient and modern), and classical colliding and overlapping in a kind of cultural shock treatment.The 32-minuteLeng Tch'eis drawn out to excruciating lengths in its simulation of the agony (and ecstasies) of torture and death. Throughout the two discs, the execution is at a very high level. WithBill Frisellon guitar,Fred Frithon bass,Joey Baronon drums,Wayne Horvitzon keyboards, and vocalist Yamatsuka Eye of the acclaimedBoredoms), Naked City combines many of Zorn's most talented collaborators, and it inspires some of his most brutish and brilliant alto saxophone playing.The Black Boxcreates a literal connection between "hard core" music and hard-core pornography. To say that it isn't for the squeamish is understatement.--Stuart Broomer