David Torn
Cloud About Mercury

THE REVIEW

"Utopia is on the horizon. I take two steps closer, it moves two steps away. I take ten steps forward and the horizon moves back ten steps. No matter how far I walk, I will never reach it. What is the use of utopia? To this: it serves to make us walk." Eduardo Galeano

Utopia is synergy. Ecstatic conceptuality. Innovation: four Argonauts on the edge of an unexplored region.

Electronic guitar, dreamlike, saturated, and savoury, aestheticizing: David Torn.

Metaphysical trumpet fanfares, crystalline soundtrack of dreams: Mark Isham.

Pulsating heart of the Crimson King, Chapman Stick, universal bass: Tony Levin.

Pulsating heart of the Crimson King, intellectual scanning, convulsive chatter of percussion: Bill Bruford.

Oriental delirium. The crowd of formal rigor. Jazz-rock aesthetics. Abstractions and dissonances. Tiny cracks on the polished surface: it is the impurities that give beauty to diamonds.

Latin-tinged cool jazz. Violent guitar blasts on delicate electronic lace and distant echoes of trumpet. Hendrix and Fripp. Danceable funk and psychedelic distortions. A blues bar on the edge of the known universe. Ingenious and invaluable musical machinations. A visionary, painter of sound. A pied piper who plays and dances on the ruins of all that we insist on calling music.

Jazz? New Age? Progressive? Ambient? Fusion? Space-rock? Musical Esperanto. Miles Davis meets King Crimson on the dark side of the moon. Sounds and rhythms for the fourth millennium.

In one word: Utopia.