Music

Average customer rating:

Well....
Stunning, although repeated material.
Not recommended except for grindcore fans
Aural assault
NO, buy it for torture garden

Black Box [Torture Garden/Leng Tch'e]
Naked City
Manufacturer: Tzadik
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

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Tracks:

Leng Tch'e

Amazon.com

This two-CD set was first released by John Zorn in Japan in the early 1990s. It couldn't be sold in the United States because of the cover art, now concealed within the Black Box. These are Zorn's most horrific inspirations--Torture Garden incited by the images of Japanese sadomasochist pornography contained herein, Leng Tch'e by photographs of a Chinese public execution involving extended torture. A key part of Zorn's aesthetic is to create a musical methodology that matches his subject matter, or, conversely, to find a subject that matches his compositional methods. Like Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, William S. Burrough's cut-up method, or the cutting and pasting of collage, Zorn's methods mimic violence, creating new forms out of the torture and destruction of the old. Torture Garden and Leng Tch'e are, literally, the short and the long of it. Torture Garden consists of 42 tracks, the longest of which is a minute and 14 seconds, the shortest a scant 10 seconds. Musical genres are literally cut up and stuck together, snippets of free jazz, lounge, country and western, pop (ancient and modern), and classical colliding and overlapping in a kind of cultural shock treatment.

The 32-minute Leng Tch'e is drawn out to excruciating lengths in its simulation of the agony (and ecstasies) of torture and death. Throughout the two discs, the execution is at a very high level. With Bill Frisell on guitar, Fred Frith on bass, Joey Baron on drums, Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, and vocalist Yamatsuka Eye of the acclaimed Boredoms), Naked City combines many of Zorn's most talented collaborators, and it inspires some of his most brutish and brilliant alto saxophone playing. The Black Box creates a literal connection between "hard core" music and hard-core pornography. To say that it isn't for the squeamish is understatement. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews:

Well...........2005-06-30

It had potential. There are some great ideas here; little bits and pieces of the less-than-a-minute songs that really caught my ear. And then... that was it. Many songs are simply unlistenable. The vocals are sometimes amazing, and other times disgusting, and the same with the saxophone. What Zorn was thinking when he threw sax into a grind mix.... is far beyond me. I think he was on some hardcore drugs when he did some of this stuff. (He'd start writing something good, shoot up, then keep writing.)
I give the album/s 3 stars because there is some good stuff here that I thoroughly enjoy listening to. This work is by no means genius or mastery, but it can be incredibly entertaining sometimes.

I will admit, however, that some of the songs (especially speedfreaks) must've required AMAZING skill to play.

Highly recommended for fans of grindcore. Not as much for anyone else.

Leng Tch'e makes good background music, not so hot for active listening.

Stunning, although repeated material........2005-03-26

"The Black Box" combines two albums, "Torture Garden" (a collection of hardcore pieces from "Naked City" and "Grand Guignol") and "Leng Tch'e", a nearly 32 minute piece.

"Torture Garden" is an accurately named and brutal listen-- while the material is stunning in its diversity, direction,and virtuoso performances, its not exactly easy to digest, and it switches directiosn drastically. Within the context of the two albums this material is also present on, it works better. If you've got those two, this is really not of much use to you. If not, this is just amazing-- a song like "Speedfreaks" can cover a genre in two and a half seconds, the album ranges from jazz to blues to neo-classical to pop to rock to death metal, and sometimes in the context of one song under a minute.

"Leng Tch'e" is another story altogether. Its really quite a piece, dark, mysterious, pulsing and growing. Its the kind of thing you're either open to or you'll hate-- improvised grindcore metal, essentially. It builds over the first 15 or so minutes, growing more and more insistent before it climaxes-- over a long period of time with Eye's voice and ZOrn's sax howling, this dies down in a cyclic form, ending similar to the beginning.

If you think you can deal with that for 30 minutes, building tension and darkness until the explosion, you'll probably love this. If not, you'll probably think this is awful.

Personally, I love it. I also love the hardcore stuff on "Torture Garden", though its less necessary given its presence elsewhere, and given the advent of the Naked City box, this set is probably less essential. Still, some great music here.

Not recommended except for grindcore fans.......2004-04-27

I've got about 30 Zorn albums, but sold this one. I love the many sides of John Zorn, but this has way too much of the hardcore grinding for my tastes. I prefer more variety like on the first Naked City album--in which the short screaming punk pieces are punctuation between more listenable (even if loud) tracks. This however is just ear torture--not quite ListenProof, but not music that I want to spend my time hearing. Not on my recommended Zorn list, despite the praise of other reviewers here.

Aural assault.......2004-03-11

Disc one is a repackage of earlier NC works..."punk-jazz/speedcore" mostly less than 90 seconds long. Explosive ejaculations of noise and fury.
Disc two (Leng Tch'e) was only available as a very expensive Japanese import before this set came out. The closest I can compare it to is the first 2 minutes of Lou Reed's "The Blue Mask" (the song, not the album), slowed down 25% and stretched out for 30 odd minutes.

Wonderful!!(if you like this kind of stuff)

NO, buy it for torture garden.......2004-01-30

somebody needs to explain to me what is so great about leng tch'e.

i'll describe it for ya:
it's a very low, droned out guitar, playing somewhere between 1 and 3 notes. it just...drones. through out the entire song, it just...echos. and that's it. that's what this song does, w/ the only exception being some interesting drum parts thrown in.

torture garden, however, is incredibly impressive. if you're a mike patton fan, you can be disapointed to know that this is where he got his fantomas vocal styling from. this eye guy is incredible.

so i say buy it for torture garden. fantomas's "delirium cordia" is a much better ambient piece than leng tch'e, so buy this and delirium cordia.

Average customer rating:

Leng Tch'e
Naked City
Manufacturer: Toys Factory
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Jazz | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000M2W3PG

Product Description

Japanese 1-track (31 minutes, 39 seconds) CD on Toys Factory, 1992.

Music:

Music