| Naked City - The Complete Studio Recordings |
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| Written by Michael Goldman | |
 Naked CityThe Complete Studio Recordings [Tzadik] Get it at Amazon  The famed photographer Weegee (Arthur Fellig) prowled late night New York City to document scenes of brutality, violence and disaster, as well as the often perplexing responses of onlookers. These were scenes that most people wouldn't want to admit were happening, much less that they somehow couldn't look away. The result was Naked City, a book of stark black & white photographs that blur the boundary between ugliness and beauty. You have to wonder if composer/saxophonist Jorn Zorn wasn't after a similar result in musical form when he assembled his Lower East Side super-group of the same name. Comprised of the NYC jazz scene's hottest players at the time -- organist Wayne Horowitz, bassist Fred Frith, guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Joey Baron and Zorn on sax -- Naked City released seven studio records of music that defied categorization and rendered distinctions such as "pretty" or "ugly" impossible to pin on them. This is challenging stuff and it's nearly as hard to grasp as it has been to get hold of - only the first Naked City album and the Torture Garden compilation of noise blasts were released in the US; the remaining were pricey Japanese imports when they were in print at all. Zorn turns 50 this year and is obviously in a reflective frame of mind. His label, Tzadik, is reissuing many of his important works as well as documenting the numerous birthday concerts occurring in NYC this year. While Zorn has worked in the fields of classical composition, jazz in the Ornette vein and free improvisation with a who's who of influential players, Naked City has always been one of his most popular projects, so it's no surprise that it was the most highly anticipated of the re-releases. The group's CDs have been collected on five CDs in a beautiful box set replete with the disturbing cover art from the original releases along with a scrapbook of photos, scores, and notes from the performers. It's a pricey set but it's obvious that a lot of money was spent on the visual production - on that alone it's one of the best looking packages you could spend your money on. Yet if these discs had been released in a ziplock bag, they would still provide the same trip through a very unique sonic wonder and horror land. The most accessible of the albums is by far the first. Originally released in 1989 as a John Zorn album, Naked City shows a band in complete control of their instruments and material, seemingly in psychic sync with each other. It's a turn-on-a-dime festival of genre bashing that runs the gamut from surf to metal to hip hop to musique conrete. In other words, everything that serious jazz is supposed to ignore. The music surges along with the incessant groove of a punk band and is overlaid with freewheeling, virtuoso solos. It's a party record for the Mensa-set -- fun but definitely brainy. And 15 years later it sounds as fresh as the year it was recorded. Anybody could tell from the cover art from the followups, depicting scenes of decay and S&M, that the ride was about to get rougher. 1992 saw the release of two Naked City albums - Grand Guignol and Heretic. The cover versions of TV themes and Ennio Morricone from the first record are traded out for guest vocals by Japanese howler Yamataka (a.k.a.Yamatsuka) Eye of The Boredoms, and the overall feel is much darker. Heretic spasms along in short vignettes of free jazz freak-outs and instrumental pyrotechnics, often with Eye jabbering incomprehensibly at full tilt - which is not to say there aren't some stunningly beautiful moments on it. Grand Guignol saw Naked City veer farther into the formless void. The tight compositions have been abandoned in favor of long improvisations of seemingly unrelated sounds. It creates a mood for sure but not a very comfortable one. The sound is increasingly disturbing and claustrophobic, a fitting soundtrack for visions of urban decay and corruption, but much of the record sounds like someone is holding a microphone over a garbage disposal. With players of such stellar caliber, it's seems a little like a waste of talent but Zorn inhabits a musical universe all his own and this must have been the statement he saw fit to make. Completists should note that the "hardcore miniatures" on 1990's Torture Garden LP were culled from Naked City and Grand Guignol; all of those tracks appear here, but in their original context on the two albums, not as a separate disc. Also, a version of Grand Guignol's title track, with a new vocal recorded by Mike Patton, has been appended. The two 1993 discs contain selections that may appeal to listeners more acclimated to mainstream formats, such as the opening track on Radio, "Asylum," a big-band-style number that swings like a late night TV talk show house band on crystal meth before it segues into the lush and loungey "Sunset Surfer," and the gorgeous guitar improv that closes the all-instrumental Absinthe, "...Rend Fou." The 30-minute sludge/wail workout "Leng Tch'e," originally released as a one-"song" EP in 1992, is tacked onto the end of this final disc. Even if the material doesn't suit your tastes, on a simply technical level there are few bands or players that pull off operating at a level this high. Admittedly this box set isn't for everyone. It's expensive (usually $85-$100, depending on your source) and there is much of it you won't want to hear often. My advice for anyone curious but unfamiliar with this music is to check out the first disc and if it grabs you, ease into the other ones. Also, every member of Naked City has recorded numerous other projects that are well worth looking into, including Zorn's marriage of free jazz and Klezmer in the quartet Masada, Frisell's lovely and lyrical CD Nashville and Fred Frith's rock guitar oriented work with Massacre as well as his more jazz-inflected solo albums. The full assault of the box set is a lot to take on but the listeners who are willing to explore the textures and language of these compositions will be rewarded the same way that Weegee's photographs reward viewers - with subtle beauty seeping out of the backdrop even though the foreground contains a bullet-riddled corpse. |
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