•
Rating: The first time someone unfamiliar with Naked City and their music sees this CD, they can't help but think of a GORE-GRIND-METAL-SLUDGE-CORE group.
However, they are sorely mistaken. They are about to encounter one of the many masterpieces of John Zorn, an artist, saxophonist, composer, and New York director. Let's talk about Zorn. Zorn began composing in '73, at the age of 19. From there, an endless series of demonstrations of his unprecedented freedom of movement within music and art. And even now, at the age of 50, he still manages to astonish.
Returning to Grand Guignol, the third installment of Naked City, the cover features a real human head positioned and sectioned on a plate, while on the back there is a pile of mutilated legs. Well, let's listen to it now.
All songs are composed by Zorn himself, and it starts with the first 6 tracks, under the title Grand Guignol with respective subtitles. These are classical and liturgical works reimagined in Zorn's style composed of hints of clean guitars, sax, electric piano, and drums.
Contemplative material, harking back to 1897 in Paris, at the Grand Guignol theater, which spread terror in those years. The 6 tracks are long (just enough, of course), slow, and suffocating, and I think I've given you the idea. Then from track 9 to 41 (f-o-r-t-y-o-n-e), violent and murderous bursts of unprecedented power.
Endless rolls, apparent chaos, pauses, screams from Eye (Boredoms), jazz, grind, and more screams but from Sax this time.
It can be defined as such: Blasting Insanity. Shards with extreme titles: Jazz Snob: Eat Shit, Thrash Jazz Assassin, Blood is Thin...
Titles that only bands like Cannibal Corpse could handle. But Zorn can do it. It's John Zorn.
Line-up always the same: Wayne Horvitz (keyboards), Bill Frisell (guitar), Fred Frith (bass), Joey Baron (drums), John Zorn (saxophone), Yamatsuka Eye (vocals). This is obviously the Naked City I prefer: contemplative, slow, then lightning-fast, wicked, insane, FREE.
That is what amazes me the most is that Zorn, met at a concert of his COBRA series, appeared to me as one of the most sunny and friendly musicians I've ever seen.
And that makes him a hero. He manages to explore incestuous worlds, work on them, and as if nothing had happened, withdraw and always remain the Genius he has always been.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By macaco
Naked City enters the mind of a schizophrenic preparing to kill, commits the act with all his fury, and his thoughts alternate without logical continuity between premeditation and deviant instinct.
The first part of the album truly manages to convey horror, desolation, and alienation, while the final pieces are more suited to B-movie splatter films with abominable scenes but also a sarcastic smile.
