Home » Jazz Articles » David Torn
Jazz Articles about David Torn
Sonar With David Torn: Tranceportation (Volume 2)
by Dan McClenaghan
In 2018 avant-garde guitarist David Torn fell in with some good company, the Swiss group Sonar, founded by guitarist Stephan Thelen. The result was Vortex (RareNoiseRecords), featuring Torn, who, in his words, contributed: “Textural events that can sometimes go on for minutes...and then the solo voice becomes almost like the cherry on top." Sonar is a two tritone guitar, tritone bass and drums quartet. Torn makes it three guitars. Their music, like that of Thelen and company's Swiss ...
Continue ReadingDrew Schlesinger & David Torn: Summer Synthesis 1978
by Mark Sullivan
In the summer of 1978 synthesist/keyboardist Drew Schlesinger had assembled a small studio in his apartment in Ithaca, NY and was composing electronic music. When he heard that local guitarist David Torn (then playing in the Zobo Funn Band) had acquired an ARP Avatar guitar synthesizer--one of the first of its kind--he approached him and asked if he'd like to bring it over to explore some of its unique sound capabilities. Torn liked what Schlesinger had been working on, so ...
Continue ReadingSonar With David Torn: Tranceportation (Volume 1)
by Dan McClenaghan
The Swiss band Sonar released Vortex (RareNoiseRecords) in 2018, bringing American avant-garde guitarist David Torn along for the ride. The addition of a third guitar to Sonar's two guitar / bass / drums lineup was a crunchy, hypnotic, funk-grooving, hard-driving multi-layered success. A follow-up of sorts, Tranceportation (Volume 1) brings more of the same, and then some. While Torn was originally employed as the producer of Vortex, he apparently found Sonar's music for the planned recording compelling. It ...
Continue ReadingSun of Goldfinger at Nublu 151
by Mike Jurkovic
Sun of Goldfinger Nublu 151 151 Avenue C March 22, 2019 Nublu 151 is one of those venues only New York City, or more specifically, the Lower East Side, can get away with. From the outside, it looks like a construction barrier: black plywood with a door cut into it. Maybe there's fifteen seats and the rest are benches and floorspace. Take your pick. Flashy lights, booze, and a sound system to die for.
Continue ReadingDavid Torn/Tim Berne/Ches Smith: Sun Of Goldfinger
by Mark Sullivan
Storied experimental guitarist David Torn is also so much more: looper, songwriter, improviser, session guitarist, film composer, record producer, and mixer. In his long association with ECM Records he has done most of those things, going back to Cloud About Mercury (1987, recently reissued)--arguably still his best known album as a leader--the group project Prezens (2007), which featured Tim Berne and others, and his more recent solo looping album Only Sky (2015). Production credits include Tim Berne's You've Been Watching ...
Continue ReadingDavid Torn: Sun Of Goldfinger
by Mike Jurkovic
For less daring and disillusioned audiences, David Torn's ongoing conversation and debate with the twenty-first century Sun of Goldfinger might sound unnervingly like seventy-plus minutes of tuneless, churning exposition laying waste to conventional form. For the rest, these three uncompromising works create an immersive excursion into an intense creative mind opening itself to all possibilities. Along with absorbing listeners and expecting reductive reactions from them, fellow New York adventurers also join Torn on these mercurial dialogs. Tim Berne's ...
Continue ReadingDavid Torn/Tim Berne/Ches Smith: Sun Of Goldfinger
by Dan McClenaghan
Sometimes a recording comes with a “play it loud" recommendation. Let's give one of those to Sun Of Goldfinger, from guitarist David Torn, alto saxophonist Tim Berne and percussionist Ches Smith. Torn, a self-described “texturalist/guitarist," has been associated with ECM Records since the '80s, with Cloud About Mercury (1987)--a disc the label is reissuing in 2019--and Without Warning and Best Laid Plans, both from 1984. Berne and Smith are relative newcomers to ECM, with four CD releases, beginning ...
Continue Reading
