naked city

John Zorn and Naked City executed twenty six savage cinematic blasts of igneous speedball free jazz noisecore for this magnificent multifaceted monster.  Multi-instrumentalist Zorn taught himself composition and counterpoint before studying briefly at Webster College.  After years experimenting with improvisational 'game pieces' and genre-blending reinterpretations of movie themes, Zorn assembled a new group for the recording of 'Naked City' featuring himself  on alto saxophone;   Bill Frisell on guitar;   Fred Frith on bass;   Joey Baron on drums;   Wayne Horvitz on keyboards;   and Yamatsuka Eye on vocals.   

Zorn would reveal:    "Naked City started with rhythm and blues/Spillane type things then went into this hard-core thing ... because I was living in Japan and experiencing a lot of alienation and rejection ... My interest in hard-core also spurred the urge to write shorter and shorter pieces ...  I run around, I listen to a lot of music, go to a lot of concerts. And when I see someone that gases me, I try to go out of my way to involve them somehow in what I'm doing or get involved in what they're doing. Eye was a great discovery. He is one of the great vocalists of all time...He's fantastic!...A lot of people can't take him. He's really extreme...He's a great screamer, but he's really got a wide variety of sounds ... I’m lucky it can’t become just another thing in the market-place because when you start dealing with artists like Madonna or whoever, people aren’t listening with their ears. They listen with their eyes and it’s just another fashion. It’s like mind control. You are told what to like with that stuff.   With my music people have to make up their own minds and think a bit ... To put it like into one sentence, it's kind of a loose system that permits improvisers to interrelate and react to each other in different ways...I don't control it at all. It's all up to the musicians in the group. They control it. They make all the cues, and they tell me what they want, and then I act like a mirroring device so that everyone can see what the cues are." 











 'Naked City' 
full album:





All compositions by John Zorn, unless otherwise noted.


01 - Batman 00:00
02 - The Sicilian Clan (Ennio Morricone)  02:03
03 - You Will Be Shot 05:36
04 - Latin Quarter 07:08
05 - A Shot In The Dark (Henry Mancini)  11:19
06 - Reanimator 14:32
07 - Snagglepuss 16:15
08 - I Want To Live (Johnny Mandel) 18:36
09 - Lonely Woman  (Ornette Coleman) 20:48
10 - Igneous Ejaculation 23:31
11 - Blood Duster 23:55
12 - Hammerhead 24:12
13 - Demon Sanctuary 24:24
14 - Obeah Man 25:06
15 - Ujaku 25:26
16 - Fuck The Facts 25:57
17 - Speedball 26:11
18 - Chinatown  (Jerry Goldsmith) 26:53
19 - Punk China Doll 31:22
20 - N.Y Flat Top Box 34:28
21 - Saigon Pickup 35:14
22 - The James Bond Theme  (John Barry) 40:05
23 - Den Of Sins 43:11
24 - Contempt  (Georges Delerue)  44:25
25 - Graveyard Shift 47:19
26 - Inside Straight 50:52




John Zorn & Naked City with Eye - NYC live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfwhG1KtQp4




John Zorn's Naked City - Montreux, Switzerland, 1990-07-19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_HQvD3S7cM


01-intro
02-osaka bondage
03-blood is thin
04-igneous ejaculation
05-ujaku
06-thrash jazz assassin
07-N.Y. flat top box
08-shangkuan ling feng (1st take)
09-shangkuan ling feng (right tempo)
10-sunset surfer
11-snagglepuss
12-the james bond theme (John Barry)
13-asylum
14-mystery song (Duke Ellington)
15-punk china doll
16-hawaii five-o (Morton Stevens)
17-rapid shave (Shirley Scott)
18-numbskull
19-demon sanctuary
20-hammerhead
21-blunt instrument
22-bonehead
23-dead spot
24-slan
25-victims of torture
26-sack of shit
27-taila (Raina Rai)
28-graveyard shift
29-speedfreaks (1st take)
30-speedfreaks (2nd take)
31-torture garden
Encores (source 2):
32-band on stage
33-bone orchard
34-graveyard of the brotherhood (Tsushima Toshiaki)
35-outro