Black Box - 20th Anniversary Edition: Torture Garden / Leng Tch'e

Naked City's post-modernist music belongs to every genre and to none, a baneful musical poltergeist that reassembles its surrounding into an web of chaos. As for the Blackbox collection, these are both definitive Naked City albums. If you could only own three Naked City albums, it would have to be _Absinthe_ and these two. _Torture Garde_ features 42 tracks, only a few of which last longer than a minute. In these skillful collages, Naked City tightly binds together multiple genres and hops between with reckless abandon, usually played at breakneck speed. "Speedfreaks", the most extreme example, lasts 50 seconds and changes styles and tempos every second or two. Often heavy and loud, with John Zorn's alto sax screeching over blaring hardcore meltdowns or noisy free jazz terrors. There is also Yamatsuka Eye. He's basically just insane. He gabbers and gibbers and screams and shrieks and roars and flies into rabid fits of seizures that seem unrelenting until Naked City hops into something else. Overall, this is some of the hottest playing you'll ever hear. The liner notes come with some grotesque images: stills from Japanese S&M films (nothing very graphic, mind you), a WHACK paintings by Japanese artist Maruo Suehiro. Then there is _Leng Tch'e_... "Leng Tch'e" (hundred pieces) was an old Chinese torture ritual where the victim was pumped with opium to prolong his life while he was slowly dismembered. Picture such a dungeon in the Ninth layer of Hell, now imagine its soundtrack. This is one of my favorite John Zorn compositions by far. Of all Naked City songs, this is the most violent and painful, but disturbingly pleasurable like some dark fantasy. A horrible antipodal rapture and agony, it is breathtakingly simple -- a continuous build-up starting on roaring guitar feedback and gradually adding drums, and Yamatsuka Eye's tormented vocals, and finally Zorn's screaming sax, climaxing at a place very different from their starting point and yet constant in its agony. Musically stunning, minimal and gripping, _Leng Tch'e_ is music that seems to play itself, inevitably pouring from a crack in the wall of reality. Eye and drummer Joey Baron are absolutely amazing here, adding so much to the intensity of the music. Tzadik says: "A specially-priced double-CD reissue, Black Box couples two of Zorn's most extreme and violent creations with the controversial music and artwork intact. Torture Garden (1991) presents Naked City's intense and groundbreaking music combining free jazz, bebop, r&b, country, funk, rockabilly, surf, metal hardcore and grindcore -- usually in the same song! This avant supergroup has influenced scores of bands including Mr. Bungle, Dim Sum Clip Job and the Boredoms (whose singer Yamantaka Eye is a featured guest on these two albums). The rare, seldom-heard, Leng Tch'e (1992), released only in Japan, and long out-of-print, features Naked City in an agonizingly slow, brutal 32-minute assault." Your music collection can never be complete without a little Naked City.

Torture Garden is a classic extreme music album, I won't just throw it into grindcore, since it's way too avant-garde just for that genre. Yes it has the song lengths of grindcore/extreme hardcore, but there's too many other styles from jazz, surf rock, and world music. There's pleanty of great reviews for this album so I won't have to go into detail. Leng Tch'e is something else too, it's pretty much the first drone metal album. Bands such as Earth, Sunn O))), Boris and Nadja are drone metal. Earth pretty much birthed the genre, but Naked City released the first album for it. This is a sincerely sick, abrasive and devastating song/album. Besides it being drone metal, there's also Naked City's/Zorn's signature avant-garde jazz and metal, making this song really experimental. Though Torture Garden is easy to get, Leng Tch'e isn't, unless you want to fork over some serious money for a CD. This box set is perfect and beautiful in a very sick way... It comes with some great deranged Japanese artwork.

This box contains two albums, Torture Garden and Leng Tch'e. For me this two albums are the best from Naked City. Extremes, violence, with a incredible artwork. 20th years after are even better. Is not only music, is a life experience. The 32 minutes of Leng Tch'e are incredible, brutal, magic. Is the sound of terror. After hear this music probably you live will change forever. Never before Bill Frisell was so intensive and brutal. After this all the rash album are simple games. Torture Garden is the typical Nacked City with 42 tracks combing free jazz, bepbop, funk, rokabilly, surf, metal... a great album, this edition some extra material from another Naked City album, "Grand Guiñol" . This black box is necessary to understand the music today, but take care is excessive for to many people, like the art cover. If you don't have yet please buy it as soon as you can. PS. Naked City are Jon Zorn, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Fred Frith, Joey Baron and Yamatsuka Eye

awesome boxset, every title is powerful and haunting.

JOHN ZORN IS A GENIUS MUSICIAN. YOU CAN HEAR NAKED CITY TOTALLY EMBEDDED IN MR. BUNGLES FIRST ALBUM. THERE ARE PARTS ON THE ALBUM THAT ARE PULLED RIGHT FROM NAKED CITYS 1st. ALBUM. I CALL THIS STYLE "THRASH JAZZ". AND MIKE PATTON WITH FANTOMAS TAKES HIS JOHN ZORN INFLUENCE TO ANOTHER LEVEL. I 1st. HEARD NAKED CITY WHEN I WAS 17(im 42 now,that hurt to type)AND IT FOREVER CHANGED MY WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSIC AS WELL AS HEARING & CREATING IT.

I never understood why this music is said to be 'weird' or 'shocking'. In a sense, it is some of Zorn's most conventional work. All the sentiments are familiar. We lived through the jagged random barrage of hours of television. We lived through the soul-deadening horrors of consumerism and continual cultural brainwashing. We lived through the mind-numbing cultural complacency of the 80's. We heard crap pop, heavy metal cheese, smooth jazz, easy listening, punk and hardcore. So what? Can any music really be shocking after all that? And it doesn't all exist in a vacuum. On any given day the real life demolition cartoon of the urban experience delivers something truly shocking, something that should really bother you. Even at its darkest Naked City's oeuvre seems to be a lyrical, playful, and adventurous way to respond to the actual horrors with some dignity and honesty. It may be uproarious or unsettling, but it shouldn't be strange to you. We should feel it coming. Zorn's chamber works for strings, for example, seem infinitely more bizzare because they make statements that fly beyond the rubbish heap of postmodernism. They offer something beautiful arising like a phoenix from the fiery dungheap of the pretentious status quo. And there is so much more; the game pieces present us with sounds we literally have never heard, Masada takes us directly into rarified ecstatic soul exploration. We don't see those works coming. Naked City, although far from ordinary, seems like a logical reaction to late 20th centurylife. There is nothing in it that isn't always there right below the surface...waiting...mocking us, making faces at us. Its fractious gyrations seem to want to restore sanity simply by taking a good look at the mouth of the beast. I think we need that. I am disappointed in my fellow man for complaining.

The first disc is a collection of Zorn's "hardcore miniatures" --- fast and loud songs clocking in between 10 and 90 seconds. Sometimes they turn on a dime from noise to jazz to rock. Sometimes they just scream bloody murder for 20 seconds. I can't think of a more intense CD than this one. It makes Slayer sound like Air Supply. The second disc is a single track half an hour long. The band builds slowly from scary thumping to a hurricane of throbbing sound. It makes you feel like a frog in a pot of water, rising to a boil so slowly that --- by the time you notice --- it's too late. If this was played by anyone else, it wouldn't work. It's too gimmicky. But these guys play so well, they make noise sound beautiful. There's a lot of control on this album. It's all carefully orchestrated for maximum effect. If I had to pick the ten best albums of all time, BLACK BOX would make the list. Easily.

This is the first ever naked city I got And its fantastic I love the bonus disc..its almost Drone metal The first disc stat of with a brutal guitar riff..and the excellent vocals.;of the japanese singer I didnt know what to expect..but if disk 1 is just to crazy for you Enjoy the much slower and great disk 2 I love it very very much!

Diese Black Box Edition, die zwei der intensivsten und kontroversesten wie gleichzeitig gegensätzlichsten Alben eines Künstlers überhaupt vereint, hat es wirklich in sich: Während ich die einzigartigen GrindJazzFunkMetalCountrySurfBluesRockabilly-Orgien auf "Torture Garden" (Original 1989 in Japan aufgenommen) schon in den frühen Neunzigern ausgiebig abgefeiert hatte, blieb mir "Leng Tchè" (1990, für John Zorn die logische Schlussfolgerung, im Jahr darauf EIN langes, schleppendes Stück herauszubringen) bisher verborgen. Dieser unsagbar effektive 43. Track ist 9 Minuten länger als die 42 vorhergehenden zusammen und bedarf einer ausführlicheren Betrachtung. Hier hört der Spaß nämlich auf, und als ich das beklemmende Werk nun zum ersten Mal "unvorbereitet" im Zusammenhang hörte, veränderte sich sofort meine Grundstimmung. Aufgrund einer irreführenden Rezension hatte ich das Bild einer verlorenen Schlacht im Kopf und geriet durch die unbeschreibliche Intension der Musik bald in die Identifikation mit einem elendig verblutenden "Gefallenen". Eindeutig unüberhörbar wurden die auf "Torture Garden" noch als "Schrulligkeiten" zelebrierbaren Laute des Vokal-Künstlers Yamataka Eye hier zu denen eines qualvoll Verreckenden, womit ich intuitiv schon auf der richtigen Fährte war: Gleichermaßen beeindruckt wie verstört ging ich der Sache dann mit Hilfe des Booklets auf den Grund: Zorn hatte sich von der Kunstgeschichte "Die Tränen des Eros" des Philosophen Georges Bataille inspirieren lassen, die sich mit dem Dualismus zwischen dem unermesslichen Horror und der rauschhaft-erotischen Faszination der abscheulichen Folter-Methode "Leng Tchè" bzw. "Lingchi" (auch als "schleichender Tod" oder "Hinrichtung durch die hundert Schnitte" bezeichnet), die in China bis 1905 gesetzlich und öffentlich durchgeführt wurde, auseinandersetzt. Dabei wird das verurteilte Opfer, als lebensverlängernde Maßnahme unter Opium-Zufuhr, an einen Pfahl gefesselt, woraufhin ihm nach und nach die einzelnen Körperteile abgeschnitten werden, bis es langsam den Tod findet... Bataille war insbesondere von den Photographien bewegt, die während der Tortur in der finalen Phase aus frontaler Perspektive geschossen wurden, im Speziellen von den ekstatischen Blicken des Sterbenden im scheinbaren Widerspruch zu den unerträglichen körperlichen Schmerzen. Ein solches Dokument ist auf dem Original-Cover des Albums (seinerzeit ausschließlich in Japan als EP erschienen) abgebildet... Verdammt harte Kost also, und als ich mir das krasse Stück, welches musikalisch genau ins Ziel trifft, anschließend nochmal über Kopfhörer gab, musste ich unausweichlich weinen. Da ich mich selbst als Künstler/ Musiker verstehe, der sich in unterschiedlichsten Gefilden bewegt, bin ich stets dankbar für derart erschütternde wie inspirative Momente und kann dieses Kunstwerk nicht hoch genug bewerten. Es trifft aber ganz sicher nicht jeden Geschmack und ist auch keineswegs "witzig". Abschließend möchte ich die bekannten Musiker, die durch technische Höchstleistungen (Torture Garden) und erstaunliches Einfühlungsvermögen (Leng Tchè) zu schockieren wissen, nicht unerwähnt lassen: John Zorn - Alto sax, Compositions Bill Frisell - Guitar Wayne Horvitz - Keyboards Fred Frith - Bass Joey Baron - Drums Yamataka Eye - Vocals

『拷問天国』と『凌遅（レンツェ）』をカップリングした2枚組。やはり注目は『凌遅（レンツェ）』だろうか。凌遅とは、人間の肉体を少しずつ切り落とし、長時間にわたり激しい苦痛を与えながら死に至らしめるという、かつて中国で行われていた処刑方法だという。ジョン・ゾーンは処刑の様子を撮影した写真をジャケットに使用しようとしたが、ノンサッチ側がこれを拒否、ジョン・ゾーンはノンサッチとの関係を断つという事態に至った。件の写真はリーフレットして封入されているが、ボンヤリとした写真で何が映っているのか良く分からない。肝心のプレイだが、全体の基調を決めているのはビル・フリーゼルのギターだ。軽くディストーションがかかったギターがグヮーンを響き心地よい。そこに他のメンバーが絡みついてくる、ジョーイ・バロンのドラムがドロドロと下から迫り、ジョン・ゾーンのアルトが嘶き、山塚アイの発狂ヴォーカルが叫ぶ。落ち着いたハード・ロックで、決して退屈ではないが、凌遅という残虐な処刑法に見合う音楽とは思えない。ジョン・ゾーンが率いたバンドとしてはPain Killerの方がよほど過激だ。『凌遅（レンツェ）』は予想していたほどの内容ではなかったが、『拷問天国』は楽しい。42曲の（グラインドコアというのでしょうか）ヘヴィー・メタル風バガテルから成り、山塚アイがほぼ全曲で叫んでいる。

42 titres du versant le plus hardcore de Naked city. Accrochez vous, ça dépote. Et pourtant, Zorn y fait feu de tous bois, il y applique la technique du cut-up, il alterne les passages calmes, les ambiances musique de film ou surf rock et les déflagrations intenses. Et parfois tout ça dans le même morceau, dépassant rarement 1 mn. Prenez le temps de le déguster, derrière les cris et les gros riffs très lourds, on a quand même des musiciens de haut vol qui maîtrisent leur art et livrent une oeuvre riche et intense. Cerise sur le gâteau, après le 1er disque et ses 42 titres, Leng Tch'e finira peut-être de vous achever avec un seul titre long mais intense de 32 mn. John Zorn est toujours là où on ne l'attend pas et c'est pour ça qu'on l'aime.

Very noisy heavy Jazz/rock that gets boring and repetitive after 10mins, shame because the saxophonist is a genius however in this context the noise out ways the content.