Jazz Articles about David Torn

About David Torn

Album Review

Sonar: Tranceportation (Volume 1)

Read "Tranceportation (Volume 1)" reviewed by Vic Albani

by Vic Albani
July 13, 2020

Della serie: “Caro signor Torn, siamo una band svizzera molto ispirata dalle opere di quel grande genio dell'immagine che risponde al nome di Maurits Cornelis Escher e più ci pensiamo, più realizziamo che se a lei interessassero le nostre geometrie sonore saremmo davvero contenti di realizzare i nostri sogni sonori con lei." Torn non se lo fa ripetere due volte e risponde che non solo sarebbe disposto a produrre il lavoro della band elvetica ma che—visto che i loro suoni ...

Album Review

Sonar With David Torn: Tranceportation (Volume 2)

Read "Tranceportation (Volume 2)" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 16, 2020

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 ...

Album Review

Drew Schlesinger & David Torn: Summer Synthesis 1978

Read "Summer Synthesis 1978" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
April 27, 2020

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 ...

Album Review

Sonar With David Torn: Tranceportation (Volume 1)

Read "Tranceportation (Volume 1)" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 17, 2019

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 ...

Live Review

Sun of Goldfinger at Nublu 151

by Mike Jurkovic
March 26, 2019

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.

Album Review

David Torn/Tim Berne/Ches Smith: Sun Of Goldfinger

Read "Sun Of Goldfinger" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
March 16, 2019

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 ...

Album Review

David Torn: Sun Of Goldfinger

Read "Sun Of Goldfinger" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
March 4, 2019

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 ...