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David Torn
(Joe's Pub; 220 capacity; $20)
By DAVID SPRAGUE
Presented in-house. Reviewed April 17, 2007.
Band: David Torn, Tim Berne, Craig Taborn, Tom Rainey. Reviewed April 17, 2007.
David Torn is one of the more difficult modern musicians to pigeonhole, what with his forays into ambient sounds, world jazz and electronic dissonance -- a combination that's kept him under the mainstream radar while garnering him a ravenous cult following that packed this tony venue more tightly than it's been populated in ages.
All of the aforementioned elements figured into this heady, improvisational set of dense, rough-hewn pieces based on, albeit in typically alinear fashion, the guitarist's new ECM release "Presenz."
Flanked by a formidable display of effects -- anchored by a box that looked, for all the world, like an old microwave -- Torn conjured a spectral sound, one seemingly more suited for astral projection than cocktail accompaniment.
The perf started strappingly, with Torn weaving a post-modern Scotty Moore lead into a tapestry that was spattered with, but not overwhelmed by, tones of dark and stormy skronk.
Rather than trade off solos in relay team fashion, the quartet burrowed into the meat of each composition simultaneously, sometimes taking parallel paths, and sometimes clashing swords fitfully -- with saxophonist Tim Berne's biting, upper-register lines gnashing and wailing atop Torn's sea of triggered samples.
Each of the participants staked out a plot of the sonic spectrum -- Tom Rainey serving as something of an anchor, despite a peripatetic style that found him prodding his drum kit with sticks, brushes and the occasional elbow, and Craig Taborn visiting loamier regions with keyboard patterns that touched on both bluesiness and machine-shop electronica.
The ensemble listed towards insularity to a debilitating degree at times, leaving even sympathetic aud members trying vainly to find a way into the aural construction being assembled onstage. But when the connection was made, the effect was magical -- the musical equivalent of the sort of mind-meld science-fiction writers have posited for decades.
On the new episode of The Jazz Session, Jason Crane interviews David Torn, a man of many talents. He's a film composer whose music you've heard in Friday Night Lights, Believe In Me, and The Order. He's also contributed tones and textures to films like this year's Best Picture winner, The Departed, and the 2000 hit Traffic. Before his film days, he was known for daring musical collaborations on albums such as Cloud About Mercury (ECM, 1987). And he's worked as a guitarist and/or producer for everyone from David Bowie and David Sylvian to John Legend and Tori Amos. David Torn has returned to ECM after two decades for prezens (ECM, 2007), an adventurous record that features Tim Berne, Craig Taborn and Tom Rainey.
