Jazz Articles about Naked City

About Naked City

Album Review

There's no limiting the band Naked to one musical genre or one concept. This band inhabits the worlds of jazz, pop, folk and everything in between, exhibiting a keen sense of what's appropriate in every setting it finds itself. Naked is a mesmerizing unit, a collective whose musical syntax continues to suggest there aren't six musicians in the band but one. Mesmerizing and softly propulsive, Naked's Get Naked speaks to a unique combination of creative concepts and influences ranging from ...

Album Review

Naked City: Live Vol. 1 Knitting Factory 1989

by Mark Corroto
May 6, 2002

John Zorn’s Naked City band circa 1989 was truly the spark in the revolution known as Downtown music. The saxophonist and composer was working in multiple worlds of free improvisation, cartoon, film, and hardcore. His combination of the three latter bridged the music of Raymond Scott, Ennio Morricone and Napalm Death. The studio recording Naked City released in 1990 seemed a natural progression from his Morricone tribute The Big Gundown, the hard-boiled detective collage Spillane, and his hardcore tribute to ...