Torture Garden

Naked City | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 19, 1993)
• Label: Shimmy Disc
• ASIN: B0000010M7
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #440,589 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heavy Going - But Worth Every Cent, October 10, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Melbourne, Victoria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Torture Garden (Audio CD)

This 2 pack album, called Black Box, is quite an impressive album. Torture Garden is lots of noisy saxophone playing to dizzying intricate time changes. Leng T'che is Naked City playing through an amazingly heavy and torturous set of music. The artwork to this cd kind of tells the story of the music, a photo set of a man going through horrendous torture in 1905 in Japan. All the while he is being dosed with opium to keep him alive, and all through the horrible torture, the man has a haunting smile on his face. If you are into Zorns heavier, noisier stuff, go for this. If you prefer the lighter jazzy stuff, stick to The Bribe and Naked City.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some of the weirdest music you'll ever hear..., February 15, 2005

By 

Jack C_01 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Torture Garden (Audio CD)

Imagine Miles Davis collaborating with Napalm Death to make an album. Impossible? Well that's how strange Naked City's music is, and it's definitely not something anyone could listen to and like. Bands such as Cynic and Atheist are labelled jazz-death metal, but this is true jazz-grind, it's like Zorn and his chums want to play grindcore, but they've got a saxophone to do it with, so that's exactly what they do, play grindcore with a saxophone. The shrieks of Yamatsuka Eye of the Boredoms on vocals are simply not human, and they add to the complete freakiness of the whole thing. This just isn't easy-going music, there are time signature changes throughout and really they take every element of catchy easy-listening music and turn it on its head to make this stunning mess.

It's so impossible to describe the style of music on display here, and if you hear a couple of odd tracks off the album, you'll most likely dismiss it as mindless noise. It needs to be listened to in full as a conceptual piece. So who is likely to enjoy this? It isn't something anyone can like, but there are a few groups of people I could recommend this to. If you've heard and liked any sort of experimental jazz in the past you might like this, and coming from the opposite direction, if you like any grindcore such as Napalm Death or Birdflesh, this might be for you. Lastly, if you are a fan of any of Mike Patton's work, especially Fantômas, then you need to see where some of his inspiration comes from. It's strange, but you've got to try it to love it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Grotesque Jewel, August 10, 2011

By 

Anonymous - See all my reviews

This review is from: Torture Garden (Audio CD)

Incredibly neurotic arrangements - noisy, crazy, garbled Japanese vocals courtesy of Eye Yamagata, ex of the Boredoms; surgical sax riffs slicing gray matter in pulsating peels by John Zorn; and tsunamic disaster area of a backing band with sparkling pools of serene melody to counterpoint the rabid chaos of this album. This is what Erich Zann would sound like if he played the sax. "Normals" for whom I've played this CD have despised it, calling it worse than a lawnmower vasectomy. It is indeed ear torture, yet it is so beautifully composed and precisely implemented that a work a "mad genius" is it's only fitting description. Truly a rare grotesque jewel. Cool S&M photos inside too. Don't leave for a party without it.