David Torn - only sky (ECM, 2015)

[jtx]

Excerpt from of David Torn's recent ECM release, :



Despite a career that now goes back over three decades, the relative infrequency of releases from guitarist and sound sculptor David Torn renders any new one, at the very least, a cause for speculation...if not enthusiastic anticipation. Beyond the soundtracks that have become one piece of the puzzle that defines who Torn is—and acting as engineer and/or producer for fellow unfettered explorers like saxophonist Tim Berne on albums including Shadow Man (ECM, 2013) as another—Torn was last heard on a curiously constructed improvised set with bassist Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel) and drummer Allan White (Yes) on the unassumingly titled Levin Torn White (Lazy Bones, 2007)....

...[On only sky,] Torn has chosen to go it alone and almost entirely in spontaneous real-time: just one man, one guitar, one electric oud and a bevy of effects—so much so that, in a Facebook conversation, Torn explained "what little bits which were not performed in the original real-time are so small as to be, 'should I really even mention this?' afterthoughts. I think there are three or four of these teensy itty-bits, and that's it."...

...only sky's nine original, real-time spontaneous compositions were created with, as the guitarist explains, "just my instrument and multiple looping devices, with some favorite fuzzboxes." Another important contribution to the sound of some of only sky's pieces is the sound of the room in which they were recorded: the Experimental Media and Performance Arts Center (EMPAC), in Troy, New York. Not unlike the Vigeland Mausoleum in Oslo, Norway—where artists like Arve Henriksen and Stian Westerhus have taken advantage of the room's marvelous 20-second delay characteristic—the EMPAC'S high ceiling and acoustics that are, in Torn's words, "pillowy but pithy at the same time," contribute another inspirational factor in the spontaneous compositional approach Torn employed for this record....

...For those who question Torn's harmonic sophistication, one listen to the closing "a goddamned specific unbalance" should resolve any doubts. Just as listening to the Frisell of Nashville (Nonesuch, 1987) provides little to suggest the more complex Frisell of, say, This Land (Nonesuch, 1994)—or, for that matter, his quarter century-plus trio with drummer Paul Motian and Joe Lovano—so, too, does trying to categorize Torn based on any one recording provide the guitarist the broad-scoped credibility that he deserves.

Still—and despite this being a solo record—only sky may come the closest to delivering the whole package when it comes to defining what David Torn is all about.

Solo recordings are always a dicey proposition; naked, with nobody to hide behind, the artist's work is laid bare for all to hear. But given that only sky is, according to Torn, "the closest to capturing what I do alone with a guitar at home," it most accurately approaches who Torn is when he's unbound by the constraints that most projects, if even inadvertently, impose. The result is a record that is his most idiomatic and individualized. Sonically it's an expansive record that's the antithesis of the traditional solo guitar record—not unlike label mate Eivind Aarset's similarly superb but far more considered Dream Logic (2012)—and for those looking to find clear form amidst the swirling clouds, elliptical phrases and chiming chordal passages, there will be plenty to challenge them. Still, everything from harsh angularity to unabashed beauty can be found on only sky, yet another album which suggests that it's those Torn makes for ECM that are invariably his best—and, in this case, his most personal, too.

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