''Torture Garden'' is an album by John Zorn's Naked City with vocalist

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 ...

on vocals. The album collects the 42 "hardcore miniatures" recorded by the band. Nine of these short intense improvisations were spread across '' Naked City'' and the other 33 would feature on the next album, ''

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 ...

''. As Zorn explained in 1990:

Basically, this Naked City record (the first album on Nonesuch) came out, right. In the middle of it are about ten songs that are really short and hard. I said I wanted to do a record of 40 of those pieces, cause I was really interested in the compression and compactness of form that that music gets to. The guys at Nonesuch were not interested. If I wanted to do that, I better take it somewhere else. So what I managed to do was get them to bankroll the whole thing, and then I licensed it to Earache and Shimmy for basically no money and no royalties. So they are just putting this stuff out that Nonesuch bankrolled.Burma, M.
Zorn Interview
Browbeat, Issue 1, 1993

The tracks were re-released along with ''

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 ...

'' as ''

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 ...

'' in 1996 and in album sequence as part of '' Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings'' in 2005. The name for the collection comes from '' Le jardin des supplices'', an 1899

decadent The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of ...

novel by

Octave Mirbeau Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 – 16 February 1917) was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the ...

Reception

The

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

review by Bradley Torreano awarded the album 4 stars stating "Songs blur together but never get boring, no lyrics are actually sung, and few songs last longer than a minute. It also never takes itself seriously, a nice relief from Zorn's heavy-handed ambient collaborations. This would make a great introduction to the noise/jazz efforts that this group of musicians pioneered in the early 1990s."Torreano, B
Allmusic Review
accessed July 22, 2011

Track listing

All compositions by John Zorn and

# "Blood Is Thin" – 1:00 # "Demon Sanctuary" – 0:38 # "Thrash Jazz Assassin" – 0:45 # "Dead Spot" – 0:31 # "Bonehead" – 0:51 # "Speedball" – 0:17 # "Blood Duster" – 0:13 # "Pile Driver" – 0:33 # "Shangkuan Ling-Feng" – 1:14 # "Numbskull" – 0:29 # "Perfume of a Critic's Burning Flesh" – 0:24 # "Jazz Snob Eat Shit" – 0:24 # "The Prestigitator" – 0:43 # "No Reason to Believe" – 0:26 # "Hellraiser" – 0:39 # "Torture Garden" – 0:35 # "Slan" – 0:23 # "Hammerhead" – 0:08 # "The Ways of Pain" – 0:31 # "The Noose" – 0:10 # "Sack of Shit" – 0:43 # "Blunt Instrument" – 0:54 # "Osaka Bondage" – 1:14 # "Igneous Ejaculation" – 0:20 # "Shallow Grave" – 0:40 # "Ujaku" – 0:27 # "Kaoru" – 0:50 # "Dead Dread" – 0:45 # "Billy Liar" – 0:10 # "Victims of Torture" – 0:23 # "Speedfreaks" – 0:29 # "New Jersey Scum Swamp" – 0:41 # "S & M Sniper" – 0:14 # "Pigfucker" – 0:23 # "Cairo Chop Shop" – 0:23 # "Fuck the Facts" – 0:11 # "Obeah Man" – 0:17 # "Facelifter" – 0:34 # "N.Y. Flat Top Box" – 0:43 # "Whiplash" – 0:19 # "The Blade" – 0:36 # "Gob of Spit" – 0:18

Personnel

* John Zorn – alto saxophone,

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 withou ...

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 ...

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

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 ...

* Fred Frith – bass *

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 *

– vocals

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Torture Garden (Album) Elektra Records albums Naked City (band) albums Albums produced by John Zorn John Zorn compilation albums 1989 compilation albums Nonesuch Records compilation albums