Torture Garden | ||||
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Compilation album by | ||||
Released | November 1, 1990 [1] | |||
Recorded | 1989–1990 in Brooklyn, New York City and Tokyo | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 25:46 | |||
Label | Shimmy Disc (US), Earache (UK), Toy's Factory (Japan) | |||
Producer | John Zorn | |||
Naked City chronology | ||||
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John Zorn chronology | ||||
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Black Box cover | ||||
Torture Garden is an album by John Zorn's Naked City with vocalist Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album collects the 42 "hardcore miniatures" recorded by the band. Nine of these short intense improvisations were spread across Naked City and the other 33 would feature on the next album, Grand Guignol . As Zorn explained in 1990:
Basically,this Naked City record (the first album on Nonesuch) came out,right. In the middle of it are about ten songs that are really short and hard. I said I wanted to do a record of 40 of those pieces,cause I was really interested in the compression and compactness of form that that music gets to. The guys at Nonesuch were not interested. If I wanted to do that,I better take it somewhere else. So what I managed to do was get them to bankroll the whole thing,and then I licensed it to Earache and Shimmy for basically no money and no royalties. So they are just putting this stuff out that Nonesuch bankrolled. [2]
The tracks were re-released along with Leng Tch'e as Black Box in 1996 and in album sequence as part of Naked City:The Complete Studio Recordings in 2005.
The name for the collection comes from Le jardin des supplices ,an 1899 decadent novel by Octave Mirbeau.
The Allmusic review by Bradley Torreano awarded the album 4 stars stating "Songs blur together but never get boring,no lyrics are actually sung,and few songs last longer than a minute. It also never takes itself seriously,a nice relief from Zorn's heavy-handed ambient collaborations. This would make a great introduction to the noise/jazz efforts that this group of musicians pioneered in the early 1990s." [3]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic | [3] |
All compositions by John Zorn and Yamatsuka Eye.
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Blood Is Thin" | 1:00 |
2. | "Demon Sanctuary" | 0:38 |
3. | "Thrash Jazz Assassin" | 0:45 |
4. | "Dead Spot" | 0:31 |
5. | "Bonehead" | 0:51 |
6. | "Speedball" | 0:17 |
7. | "Blood Duster" | 0:13 |
8. | "Pile Driver" | 0:33 |
9. | "Shangkuan Ling-Feng" | 1:14 |
10. | "Numbskull" | 0:29 |
11. | "Perfume of a Critic's Burning Flesh" | 0:24 |
12. | "Jazz Snob Eat Shit" | 0:24 |
13. | "The Prestidigitator" | 0:43 |
14. | "No Reason to Believe" | 0:26 |
15. | "Hellraiser" | 0:39 |
16. | "Torture Garden" | 0:35 |
17. | "Slan" | 0:23 |
18. | "Hammerhead" | 0:08 |
19. | "The Ways of Pain" | 0:31 |
20. | "The Noose" | 0:10 |
21. | "Sack of Shit" | 0:43 |
22. | "Blunt Instrument" | 0:54 |
23. | "Osaka Bondage" | 1:14 |
24. | "Igneous Ejaculation" | 0:20 |
25. | "Shallow Grave" | 0:40 |
26. | "Ujaku" | 0:27 |
27. | "Kaoru" | 0:50 |
28. | "Dead Dread" | 0:45 |
29. | "Billy Liar" | 0:10 |
30. | "Victims of Torture" | 0:23 |
31. | "Speedfreaks" | 0:29 |
32. | "New Jersey Scum Swamp" | 0:41 |
33. | "S & M Sniper" | 0:14 |
34. | "Pigfucker" | 0:23 |
35. | "Cairo Chop Shop" | 0:23 |
36. | "Fuck the Facts" | 0:11 |
37. | "Obeah Man" | 0:17 |
38. | "Facelifter" | 0:34 |
39. | "N.Y. Flat Top Box" | 0:43 |
40. | "Whiplash" | 0:19 |
41. | "The Blade" | 0:36 |
42. | "Gob of Spit" | 0:18 |
John Zorn is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". His avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and world music. Rolling Stone noted that "[alt]hough Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he's gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time".
Big Black was an American punk rock band from Evanston, Illinois, active from 1981 to 1987. Founded first as a solo project by singer and guitarist Steve Albini, the band became a trio with an initial lineup that included guitarist Santiago Durango and bassist Jeff Pezzati, both of Naked Raygun. In 1985, Pezzati was replaced by Dave Riley, who played on Big Black's two full-length studio albums, Atomizer (1986) and Songs About Fucking (1987).
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup. Their music incorporated elements of jazz, surf, progressive rock, classical, heavy metal, grindcore, country, punk rock, and other genres.
Wayne Horvitz is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer. He came to prominence in the Downtown scene of 1980s and '90s New York City, where he met his future wife, the singer, songwriter and pianist Robin Holcomb. He is noted for working with John Zorn's Naked City among others. Horvitz has since relocated to the Seattle, Washington area where he has several ongoing groups and has worked as an adjunct professor of composition at Cornish College of the Arts.
Yamataka Eye is a Japanese vocalist and visual artist, best known as a member of Boredoms, Hanatarash and Naked City. He has changed his stage name three times, from Yamatsuka Eye, to Yamantaka Eye, to Yamataka Eye, and sometimes calls himself eYe or EYヨ. He also DJs under the name DJ 光光光 or "DJ pica pica pica", and has used numerous other pseudonyms.
The Suicide Machines is the third album by the American punk rock band the Suicide Machines, released in 2000 by Hollywood Records. It was the band's first album with drummer Ryan Vandeberghe, replacing Derek Grant who had left the group before the release of 1998's 'Battle Hymns'. The album's musical direction shifted away from the ska punk and hardcore styles of their previous albums and exhibited heavy pop influence, leading many to classify the album as pop punk and alternative rock. A music video was filmed for the single "Sometimes I Don't Mind", which reached No. 22 on Billboard's Modern Rock charts. The album itself ranked at No. 188 on the Billboard 200.
Naked City is an album by John Zorn, released on Elektra Nonesuch in February 1990. The band assembled by Zorn for the album would later be known as Naked City. The album is characterized by its covers of movie themes and its fusion of various musical genres.
Weird Little Boy is a one-off album by a band of the same name, performed by John Zorn, Trey Spruance, William Winant (percussion), Mike Patton and Chris Cochrane (guitar). It was released in 1998 on the Japanese label Avant.
Polly Bradfield is an American violinist from the New York City free improvisation scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her closest musical associates were Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn. She also played on records by William Parker and Frank Lowe. Her music career ended when she moved to California sometime in the 1980s. Her last appearance on record was on Zorn's The Big Gundown in 1986.
Grand Guignol is the second full-length studio album released by John Zorn's band Naked City in 1992 on the Japanese Avant label. The album followed Torture Garden, which was a compilation of "hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol. The album is notable for the inclusion of cover versions of pieces written by classical composers, the guest vocal of Bob Dorough, and also, like Torture Garden, a selection of "hardcore miniatures" which are intense, fast-tempo, brief compositions, which feature the wailing of Zorn's alto sax, and the screams of Yamatsuka Eye. The album is titled after the infamous Grand Guignol theater in Paris, which was open from 1897 to 1962, where performances centered around extreme violence.
Leng Tch'e is the fourth release from John Zorn's band Naked City. It consists of a single track, running at just over half an hour. It was first released on the Japanese Toys Factory label in 1992. Unlike Naked City's previously material, which was known for its fast tempo and rapid transitions between a variety of heterogeneous styles, Leng Tch'e is a more avant-garde take on sludge metal. It was reissued in 1997 along with Torture Garden in the double-disc collection Black Box.
Heretic is the third studio album by the band Naked City, used as a soundtrack for the underground S/M film Jeux des Dames Cruelles. The album utilises different combinations of band members in duos and trios with the entire band performing together on only one track "Fire and Ice".
Radio is the fourth studio album by the band Naked City, and their first to be composed entirely by bandleader John Zorn. The album was also released as part of Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings on Tzadik Records in 2005.
Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings is a five disc box set that contains all of the studio albums released by Naked City during their five-year history.
Painkiller: The Collected Works is a 1997 four disc box set by the American musical group Painkiller. The set contains the group's entire recorded output up to 1997: two EPs, the album Execution Ground and a live album previously released on the Japanese edition of Execution Ground.
Naked City Live is a live album recorded by Naked City in 1989 and released on John Zorn's Tzadik label in 2002. All of the songs, with the exception of "Erotico", "The Way I Feel" and "Skate Key", were later recorded in the studio for the band's debut album. To date it is the only official live release by the band.
Sacrifist is the second album by Bill Laswell's experimental music project Praxis, released in 1993 on Laswell's label Subharmonic. Originally, the album was intended to be a Rammellzee project, but soon was converted into the second Praxis album, after suggestions made by John Zorn.
Music for Children is the first release in John Zorn's Music Romance Series and features three Naked City compositions performed by Zorn with the band Prelapse; a 20-minute composition for wind machines and controlled feedback systems dedicated to Edgar Varese, and a classical chamber music piece for violin, percussion and piano performed by the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio framed by a poly-rhythmic etude for percussion and celeste and a lullaby for music box.
Black Box is a compilation album by John Zorn's band Naked City featuring Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album is a collection of the "hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol that were originally released on Torture Garden in 1990 and the extended piece Leng Tch'e which was only released in Japan in 1992. This compilation was released on Tzadik Records in 1996.
Tap: Book of Angels Volume 20 is an album by guitarist Pat Metheny performing compositions from John Zorn's Masada Book Two. The album was released simultaneously on Tzadik Records and Nonesuch Records. Though Zorn and Metheny are of similar age and both came to prominence in the late 1970s and have long admired each other's music, Tap is the first collaboration between the artists.