Naked City's Radio album is a great example of Zorn's many influences. On the inside of the CD cover, there is a list titled "Inspirations/Refer" that directly corresponds to each song. As you can see, his influences are many and varied. Perhaps the most bizaare thing is that he throws them together into songs, like building blocks. As the disturbing "American Pyscho" illustrates, with influences ranging from Charlie Haden and Red Garland to Liberace and The Boredoms.
May 8, 2000
My original impression of Naked City's
was that it didn't sound or look as good as the first Naked City album, and
that it didn't have as much feeling. It's been collecting dust on my shelf
for a year or so until recently, when I was describing Naked City to a friend,
and found myself talking about the last half of Radio quite a bit. So I
popped it into my regular rotation of CD's, and have been listening to it
pretty frequently for about a week. It occured to me that perhaps I hadn't
given Radio as much listening time as I should.
Taken on its own, the album makes the
disturbing progression from the easily digestable and fun pop rock feel of
the first seven tunes into the depths of hard rock, noise, hardcore, and 20th
century classical. The last ten songs recall the in your face aggressiveness
of Torture Garden, but they run longer than the Torture Garden songs, most of
which are under one minute. These songs lend themselves to repeated listenings
more than the vignette style of Torture Garden, which are over almost too fast
to be considered. These pieces seem to have more concrete sense of form than
Torture Garden, often revisiting sections and expanding upon them, as in
"The Vault" where we are led through a succession of textures and styles that
repeat in succession, but with the order changed slightly each time. By the end the
textures and images begin to overlap and form together in new ways.
It is also interesting to consider the
motivation behind Zorn's structure of Radio and its relation to the title.
The album starts with complete songs in recognizable idioms, with Sunset
Surfer, Party Girl and to a lesser extent Sex Fiend and The Bitter and the
Sweet staying within a certain style throughout. However, one gets the feeling
of a slow descent into madness and destruction throughout the album, which
finally culminates in "American Psycho" and the brilliant use of sections of
silence between a collage of American music and images. Zorn keeps the listener
constantly surprised, sometimes fading from noise improv into silence, sometimes
into a jazz swing, then funk for a few seconds, then... silence again. The last
minute or so has Wayne Horvitz laying jazz piano chords over a light but
constant throb of cymbals, expectancy hanging in every note as you wait for Zorn
to make it all come crashing down in a barrage of noise. But the album fades out
to the sound of an ominous sigh.