David Torn
Improviser, film composer and soundscape artist – approached the far sonic edges of what one man and a guitar can create with only sky, a solo recording of almost orchestral atmosphere. This album followed Torn’s 2007’s acclaimed prezens, a full-band project for ECM (featuring Tim Berne, Craig Taborn & Tom Rainey) that Jazzwise described as “a vibrating collage full of shimmering sonic shapes, a dark, urban electronic soundscape – a potent mix of jazz, free-form rock and technology that is both demanding and rewarding.” Many of those same descriptors apply to only sky, with its hovering ambient shadows and vaulting flashes of light, its channelling of deep country/blues memories and Burroughsian dreams of North Africa. Nearly 30 years before the release of only sky came Torn’s ECM album Cloud About Mercury, with trumpeter Mark Isham and the latter-day King Crimson rhythm section of Tony Levin and Bill Bruford.
Torn’s initial tenure [...]
Improviser, film composer and soundscape artist – approached the far sonic edges of what one man and a guitar can create with only sky, a solo recording of almost orchestral atmosphere. This album followed Torn’s 2007’s acclaimed prezens, a full-band project for ECM (featuring Tim Berne, Craig Taborn & Tom Rainey) that Jazzwise described as “a vibrating collage full of shimmering sonic shapes, a dark, urban electronic soundscape – a potent mix of jazz, free-form rock and technology that is both demanding and rewarding.” Many of those same descriptors apply to only sky, with its hovering ambient shadows and vaulting flashes of light, its channelling of deep country/blues memories and Burroughsian dreams of North Africa. Nearly 30 years before the release of only sky came Torn’s ECM album Cloud About Mercury, with trumpeter Mark Isham and the latter-day King Crimson rhythm section of Tony Levin and Bill Bruford.
Torn’s initial tenure with ECM also included Best Laid Plans, his 1984 release with drummer Geoffrey Gordon; and the guitarist featured on Jan Garbarek’s album It’s OK to Listen to the Gray Voice. More recently, Torn produced and mixed saxophonist Tim Berne’s ECM albums Shadow Man (2013) and You’ve Been Watching Me (2015). Torn, a native of New York state, has worked across jazz (with the Bad Plus and others), film music (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Carter Burwell) and pop (David Bowie, Jeff Beck, David Sylvian and more).
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