Naked City was an
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
music group led by saxophonist and composer
John Zorn
John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jaz ...
. Active primarily in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition (and improvisation) in a traditional
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band lineup. Their music incorporated elements of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
,
surf,
progressive rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...
,
classical,
heavy metal,
grindcore
Grindcore is an extreme fusion genre of heavy metal and hardcore punk that originated in the mid-1980s, drawing inspiration from abrasive-sounding musical styles, such as thrashcore, crust punk, hardcore punk, extreme metal, and industrial. G ...
,
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...
,
punk rock, and other
genres
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
.
History
Named after a 1945 book of graphic black and white photographs by
Weegee
Arthur (Usher) Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), known by his pseudonym Weegee, was a photography, photographer and photojournalism, photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography in New York City.
Weegee w ...
, the band performed an aggressive mix of "
soundtrack
A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...
themes,
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
y
hard bop
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospe ...
, speedy hardcore rock, squealing
free jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during ...
ndmetallic
Metallic may be a reference to:
*Metal
* Metalloid, metal-like substance
*Metallic bonding, type of chemical bonding
* Metallicity, in astronomy the proportion of elements other than helium and hydrogen in an object
*Metallic color, a color that ...
funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...
". In Naked City's characteristic early style, songs were often performed at astonishingly fast
tempos
In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...
, drawing on
thrash metal
Thrash metal (or simply thrash) is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by its overall aggression and often fast tempo.Kahn-Harris, Keith, ''Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge'', pp. 2–3, 9. Oxford: Berg, 2007, . ...
and
hardcore punk
Hardcore punk (also known as simply hardcore) is a punk rock music genre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots can be traced to earlier punk ...
's emphasis on extreme speed. Many songs were quite brief, and typically switched musical genres every few measures. One critic described the band's music as "jump-cutting micro-
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
s of
hardcore
Hardcore, hard core or hard-core may refer to:
Arts and media Film
* ''Hardcore'' (1977 film), a British comedy film
* ''Hardcore'' (1979 film), an American crime drama film starring George C Scott
* ''Hardcore'' (2001 film), a British documen ...
,
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...
, sleazy
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, covers of
John Barry and
Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Colle ...
, brief abstract tussles — a whole city crammed into two or three minute bursts".
This fast-change tendency was inspired in part by
Carl Stalling
Carl William Stalling (November 10, 1891 – November 29, 1972) was an American composer, voice actor and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' shorts produced by War ...
— a Zorn favorite — who wrote music for many
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
cartoon
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...
s, that featured frequent shifts in tempo, theme and style.
Naked City's
first album was distributed under Zorn's name by
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly called Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Non ...
and featured a
Weegee
Arthur (Usher) Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), known by his pseudonym Weegee, was a photography, photographer and photojournalism, photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography in New York City.
Weegee w ...
photograph of a dead gangster on its cover, along with macabre illustrations by
Maruo Suehiro.
Zorn stated that "Naked City started with
rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...
/''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." There was disagreement between Zorn and the label over cover art on subsequent albums. Zorn wanted to use explicit
S&M pictures, images from 19th century medical archives, and execution photographs, most notoriously of a
Leng Tch'e
Leng Tch'e is a Belgian grindcore band. The band describes their style as "razorgrind", a combination of grindcore with death metal, stoner rock and metalcore. The band's name is an alternate romanisation of " língchí", a method of torture an ...
victim; Nonesuch refused. Zorn ended his relationship with the label, releasing subsequent Naked City albums on
Shimmy Disc Shimmy Disc is a New York City-based independent record label founded in 1987 by Mark Kramer. Before it was sold to the Knitting Factory, artists like Bongwater, Daniel Johnston, Fly Ashtray, Galaxie 500, King Missile, Boredoms, Ruins, Ween, Gwar ...
and his own Avant and
Tzadik
Tzadik ( he, צַדִּיק , "righteous ne, also ''zadik'', ''ṣaddîq'' or ''sadiq''; pl. ''tzadikim'' ''ṣadiqim'') is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The ...
labels.
The EP ''
Torture Garden'' (1989) featured "hardcore miniatures", intense brief compositions often lasting less than a minute. Some of these tracks had also featured on the band's debut and others would resurface on the band's next full-length release, ''
Grand Guignol
''Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol'' (: "The Theatre of the Great Puppet")—known as the Grand Guignol–was a theatre in the Pigalle district of Paris (7, cité Chaptal). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialised in natura ...
'' (1992), which also included performances of works by
Claude Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
,
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...
,
Orlande de Lassus
Orlande de Lassus ( various other names; probably – 14 June 1594) was a composer of the late Renaissance. The chief representative of the mature polyphonic style in the Franco-Flemish school, Lassus stands with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palest ...
,
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
, and
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
.
The band's third album, ''
Heretic'' (1992), featured more of these short improvisations produced for the soundtrack of an
underground
Underground most commonly refers to:
* Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth
Underground may also refer to:
Places
* The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston
* The Underground ...
S/M film ''Jeux des Dames Cruelles''. The band released a second EP, ''
Leng Tch'e
Leng Tch'e is a Belgian grindcore band. The band describes their style as "razorgrind", a combination of grindcore with death metal, stoner rock and metalcore. The band's name is an alternate romanisation of " língchí", a method of torture an ...
'', in 1992 featuring a single composition which lasted just over half an hour. ''
Radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
'', released in 1993, was the first Naked City album composed solely by Zorn, and featured tracks crediting a wide range of musical influences.
The final recording from the band, ''
Absinthe
Absinthe (, ) is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from several plants, including the flowers and leaves of ''Artemisia absinthium'' ("grand wormwood"), together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs. Historical ...
'' (1993), featured a blend of
ambient noise-styled compositions with tracks titled after the works of
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the ''fin de siècle'' in international and ...
,
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
and other figures in the ''
fin de siècle
() is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context ...
''
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement (Fr. ''décadence'', “decay”) was a late-19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality.
The Decadent movement first flourished ...
, and a dedication to
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
.
Zorn discontinued Naked City when he felt "... the need to write music for other ensembles, in other contexts, with new ideas".
A brief 15th anniversary reunion occurred in 2003 for two shows in Amsterdam and Warsaw respectively.
[Dahlen, C]
Pitchfork Media Review: Naked City – The Complete Studio Recordings
January 19, 2005
Cinematic connections
The group covered numerous film soundtrack cuts, including work by
Georges Delerue
Georges Delerue (12 March 1925 – 20 March 1992) was a French composer who composed over 350 scores for cinema and television. Delerue won numerous important film music awards, including an Academy Award for ''A Little Romance'' (1980), three C ...
. ''
Heretic'' was intended as the soundtrack for a film starring
Karen Finley.
The tracks "Bonehead" and "Hellraiser", from ''Torture Garden'', are featured in the opening sequence of
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, G ...
's film ''
Funny Games'' and its 2007
remake
A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the same ...
.
Band members
*
John Zorn
John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jaz ...
–
alto saxophone
The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B tenor ...
*
Bill Frisell
William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts ...
–
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
*
Fred Frith
Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser.
Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock ...
–
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
*
Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz (born 1955) is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer. He came to prominence in the Downtown scene of 1980s and '90s New York City, where he met his future wife, the singer, songwriter and pianist Robin Holcomb. He ...
–
keyboards
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
*
Joey Baron
Bernard Joseph Baron (born June 26, 1955 in Richmond, Virginia) is an American avant-garde jazz drummer who plays frequently with Bill Frisell and John Zorn.
Music career
Baron was born on June 26, 1955, in Richmond Virginia. When he was nine, ...
–
drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...
*
Yamatsuka Eye
(born , 13 February 1964) is a Japanese vocalist and visual artist, best known as a member of Boredoms and Naked City. He has changed his stage name three times, from Yamatsuka Eye, to Yamantaka Eye, to Yamataka Eye, and sometimes calls hims ...
–
vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
;Live members
*
Mike Patton
Michael Allan Patton (born January 27, 1968) is an American singer, producer, film composer and voice actor, best known as the lead vocalist of the alternative metal band Faith No More. Noted for his vocal proficiency, diverse singing techni ...
– vocals (1991 and 2003)
*
Cyro Baptista
Cyro Baptista (born December 23, 1950) is a Brazilian percussionist in jazz and world music. He creates many of the percussion instruments he plays.
Career
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Baptista arrived in the U.S. in 1980 with a scholarship to C ...
– percussion (1989)
* Carol Emanuel – harp (1989)
Discography
Studio albums
* ''
Naked City'' (1990)
* ''
Grand Guignol
''Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol'' (: "The Theatre of the Great Puppet")—known as the Grand Guignol–was a theatre in the Pigalle district of Paris (7, cité Chaptal). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialised in natura ...
'' (1992)
* ''
Heretic'' (1992)
* ''
Leng Tch'e
Leng Tch'e is a Belgian grindcore band. The band describes their style as "razorgrind", a combination of grindcore with death metal, stoner rock and metalcore. The band's name is an alternate romanisation of " língchí", a method of torture an ...
'' (1992)
* ''
Radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
'' (1993)
* ''
Absinthe
Absinthe (, ) is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from several plants, including the flowers and leaves of ''Artemisia absinthium'' ("grand wormwood"), together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs. Historical ...
'' (1993)
Live albums
* ''
Naked City Live, Vol. 1: The Knitting Factory 1989'' (2002)
* ''Live in Quebec '88'' (2017)
Compilation albums
* ''
Torture Garden'' (contains the "hardcore miniatures" that were also released on the albums ''Naked City'' and ''Grand Guignol'') (1990)
*''
Black Box
In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...
'' (contains the albums ''Torture Garden'' and ''Leng Tch'e'', originally released only in Japan) (1996)
* ''
Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings'' (Box Set) (2005)
References
External links
Naked City index*
{{Authority control
American jazz ensembles from New York City
American experimental musical groups
American grindcore musical groups
Avant-garde jazz ensembles
Earache Records artists
American avant-garde metal musical groups
Free improvisation ensembles
John Zorn
Musical groups disestablished in 1993
Musical groups established in 1988
Musical quintets
Shimmy Disc artists
Tzadik Records artists