Sun Of Goldfinger (ECM)
David Torn / Tim Berne / Ches Smith
Released March 1, 2019
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
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About:
David Torn, a longstanding ECM artist, has enjoyed a particularly fruitful 21st-century with the label, releasing two albums under his own name – the solo only sky and quartet disc prezens – in addition to producing records by Tim Berne and Michael Formanek. With Sun of Goldfinger, Torn returns in a trio alongside the alto saxophonist Berne and percussionist Ches Smith (a member of Berne’s Snakeoil band who made his ECM leader debut in 2016 with The Bell). The Torn/Berne/Smith trio, also dubbed Sun of Goldfinger, features alone on two of this album’s three intense tracks of 20-plus minutes; the vast sonic tapestries of “Eye Muddle” and “Soften the Blow” – each spontaneous group compositions – belie the fact that only a trio is weaving them, with live electronics by Torn and Smith expanding the aural envelope. The third track, the Torn composition “Spartan, Before It Hit,” showcases an extended ensemble with two extra guitars, keyboards and a string quartet; it’s an otherworldly creation, ranging from hovering atmospherics to dark-hued lyricism to storming, sky-rending grandeur.
Sun of Goldfinger first came together in 2010, with an invitation from Berne for Torn to join the saxophonist and a young drummer for a gig in Brooklyn. “It was intriguing from the start,” Torn recalls. “I’ve had a close friendship and deep musical relationship with Tim since the ’90s, and playing live with him is always special – we push each other into new territory. And that drummer turned out to be Ches, and I thought he was really something, just burning. We played a lot shows as a trio: from Colorado to Brazil, as well as across New York City – it was a lot of fun. But when we toured Europe in 2017, that’s when it really came together. I’ve never played anything that sounds or feels quite like this.”
The nearly 25-minute length of each track on Sun of Goldfinger mirrors the exploratory intensity of the trio live. Torn – who helmed the sessions in multiple New York studios – culled the high-impact tracks “Eye Muddle” and “Soften the Blow” from lengthy group improvisations. These two Sun of Goldfinger pieces saw him using the mixing process as “just a gigantic reveal – the goal being to bring to light for the listener, sonically speaking, all that was going on in the studio with the three of us,” he says. “Between our hands and our feet, Ches and I were creating a lot of sounds. He was burning on the drums, as ever, but he was also employing his own electronics.
“All those sounds Ches and I are creating also give Tim something to really play off in his solos, opening a door for him to use his extended techniques, particularly high harmonics, to create sonic effects of his own, even on a purely acoustic instrument,” Torn continues. “Then there’s his ability to drive the rhythmic pulse. He’s almost unique among saxophonists in the way he can drive a rhythm. There are also episodes in ‘Spartan, Before It Hit’ of that lyricism in Tim’s playing that I’ve been trying to accent on the more recent Snakeoil records.”
This album centerpiece, “Spartan, Before It Hit,” is a kaleidoscopic epic, one that expands the trio into a tentet – with the addition of two more guitarists, Mike Baggetta and Ryan Ferreira (who performs in the expanded edition of Snakeoil), keyboardist Craig Taborn (who has released several acclaimed albums as a leader on ECM) and a string quartet. This track is a blend of composition and improvisation, with the improv reflecting and extending Torn’s written material. He then used the mix as part of the compositional process, crafting a dream-like whole.
Reflecting on Sun of Goldfinger, Torn says: “This isn’t jazz music or rock music. I really can’t put it into any genre classification – it’s just music made by people who care deeply about what we’re expressing and how we’re expressing it, however abstract it may feel on first listen.”
Across a career as a guitarist, composer, improviser, producer and soundscape artist, David Torn has worked with innovators in jazz (Jan Garbarek, The Bad Plus), film music (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Carter Burwell) and rock (David Bowie, Jeff Beck, David Sylvian). Torn’s association with ECM has included the 1987 album Cloud About Mercury, featuring him alongside trumpeter Mark Isham and the latter-day King Crimson rhythm section of Tony Levin and Bill Bruford. It was the sort of music that led Guitar Player magazine to declare Torn “one of music’s Top 50 guitarists, ever.” Other Torn releases on ECM include Best Laid Plans, with drummer Geoffrey Gordon, and two albums with the Everyman Band; the guitarist also featured on Garbarek’s It’s OK to Listen to the Gray Voice.All About Jazz called Torn’s 2007 album prezens “the most fully realized of his career… boldly adventurous.” Jazzwise described this record – featuring the guitarist alongside saxophonist Tim Berne, keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey – 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.” The guitarist’s follow-up to prezens was the 2015 solo album only sky, which The New York City Jazz Record praised for its rare combination of “realism and surrealism.” Torn has also produced and mixed Berne’s ECM albums Shadow Man (2013), You’ve Been Watching Me (April 2015) and Incidentals (2017), as well as bassist-composer Michael Formanek’s large-ensemble disc, The Distance (2016).
Track Listing:
1. Eye Meddle 23:55
2. Spartan, Before It Hit 22:10
3. Soften The Blow 22:50
Personnel:
David Torn: electric guitar, live looping, electronics
Tim Berne: alto saxophone
Ches Smith: drums, electronics, tanbou
Craig Taborn: electronics, piano (2)
Mike Baggetta: guitar (2)
Ryan Ferreira: guitar (2)
Scorchio String Quartet
Amy Kimball: violin
Rachel Golub: violin
Martha Mooke: viola
Leah Coloff: cello
Recorded September 2015 – August 2018, at The Bunker, Brooklyn Recording, by Daniel James Goodwin, assisted by Adam Tilzer, Nolan Thies
Mixed by David Torn
Cover Photo: Tim Berne
Design: Sascha Kleis
Producer: David Torn
Review:
David Torn and Tim Berne have a relationship that reaches back to the 1990s, Torn having produced several efforts by the saxophonist, often adding a harsh bite to his electronics-oriented ensembles. But this project has been gestating since 2010: With drummer Ches Smith, also a member of Berne’s group Snakeoil, the trio has played extensively in the States and Europe.
Sun Of Goldfinger contains two collective improvisations and a single composed piece, all heavily reshaped after the fact by Torn, whose mastery of the studio easily is the equal of his guitar wizardry. At the 12-minute mark of the initially soft and beautiful “Eye Meddle,” Smith launches a thunderous beat out; processed so it sounds like a trip-hop sample of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, it ushers the piece into an entirely new sonic realm. Berne begins crying in a hoarse and raucous tone, manically repeating a single phrase, as Torn unleashes long bursts of post-noise-rock guitar and loops of deep. He nods to John McLaughlin’s work with Miles Davis, too, borrowing the wasp-trapped-under-glass tone of “Go Ahead John” and quoting a phrase from “Right Off.”
The album’s middle track, “Spartan, Before It Hit,” is its most elaborate, as the ensemble is augmented by a string quartet, two additional guitarists and piano. While the guests appear only briefly, and not simultaneously, they make the most of their moments. When the piano and guitars come crashing in at the nine-minute mark, the sound is positively apocalyptic, wiping away all that’s come before. The strings, by contrast, are relatively sweet, even when Torn, Berne and Smith are scorching the air.
Philip Freeman (DownBeat)
