David Torn re-emerges on ECM

Twenty years ago, more or less, David Torn made his debut on ECM records with an ethereal yet muscular record called Cloud About Mercury , a disc that established him, with his experiments in looping and expanded sonic palette, as one of a few who were pushing the boundaries of the electric guitar. Time passes, and Torn has had quite a ride since then, with a controversial move to Windham Hill, becoming an in-demand film composer, producer and session guitarist. He played on a Madonna album, recorded two CDs and toured with David Bowie. Now, with the release of Prezens , again on ECM, he has his first disc under his own name in almost ten years (Splattercell came out in 1999). Prezens is also a band, featuring Tim Berne on saxophone, Craig Taborn on keyboards and Tom Rainey on drums, but the CD is a reconstruction, with Torn taking live performances and manipulating them in the studio to achieve his own designs. It’s a masterwork, both spontaneous and compositional, incredibly diverse (from heavy metal moments to ambient electronic passages to jazzy stretches). Although he never left, David Torn is back.

Tom Chandler: How did your concert in New York go?

David Torn: It was a pretty intense show somehow. Usually we play once a month, and usually we play in Brooklyn, at a funky club that I love. So this was the fancy gig, you know? (laughs) We’re playing in Brooklyn in a couple of weeks, we follow that with a night in Philadelphia, then we go to the Montreal Jazz Festival and people seem to be interested in seeing the band perform, which is great!

TC: There’s some

thing that seems sort of pure about playing a monthly gig at a club.

DT: There is something beautiful about it. It’s one of my favorite things! It doesn’t have the stress, nor the logistics of touring. The band comes together. I’ve toured with an expanded version of this band in England a few years ago, and it was great fun, I loved it. But, practically, there’s so much that goes into touring that I just couldn’t handle it. I actually have a job that I’m focused on and committed to! It is more demanding than that even, you can’t do both, you know?

TC: With the film music, do you get booked way out in advance?

DT: Sometimes it just happens on a moment’s notice, like what just occurred. I finished a project and was looking forward to driving to New York from California and having ten days to myself and ten minutes after I delivered the project that I was on, I got hired on a film that I never thought I was gonna get hired on. I said, “Great, when do I start?” And they said, “Now? Two weeks ago?” OK! Life becomes turmoil, all plans shot to hell. That’s just how it goes.

TC: Is it always

true that the movie exists before the music?

DT: Yes. Always true. 99.99 percent of the time does music come last, but it’s treated like a strange and distant cousin. It’s actually creatively and scheduling-wise, it makes for very tense situations. You jump into a film, and these people have been working on this film for anywhere from six months to four years, and they know every detail of the story, the film, the characters, the music that they’ve already put into the score but they’re not going to use. That they can’t use! So there you are, and somebody says, “You have five weeks to come up with the best music we’ve ever heard for this film.” (laughs)

TC: Do you get the respect at least of being David Torn?

DT: No! Dude, not at all. Usually at some point in the process, most of the people don’t follow music or musicians, every once in a while you run into someone with a great love for music… But usually, at some point in the process, the director will turn to me, just trying to be friendly, and say something like “so what instrument do you play?” I always think to myself, “you don’t know what instrument I play?!!!” (laughs)

TC: You hired me right?

DT: It’s one of the few times in my life that I think to myself, do you have any idea who the fuck I think I am, based on what other people have told me? I never want to mine that hubris, and I know he’s trying to be friendly, but my hackles are up. I’m not even gonna tell him what instrument I play!

TC: Tell me about the history of the Prezens band, and how you met those guys.

DT: Well, I had been mastering some records for Bobby Previte, and I did the occasional gig with him on the proviso that they would be fully improvised gigs, in New York at the Knitting Factory. I think it was just me and Bobby, and I met Tim Berne there. Tim and I hit it off. This was in 1999 or 2000. I started doing some mastering work for Tim and we kind of bonded, right up. That worked out extremely well, we started working together a lot, and started doing things in mastering sessions that were quite unusual, to bring up the quality of the live tapes to make his band sound like what I knew it could sound like. So then, he invited me into producing some records and we started playing some gigs together. Again, it was with the proviso that I only wanted to play gigs that were improvised. I didn’t want to rehearse a band.. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer, organizing music, composing, arranging, and I just wanted to be able to blow. When we started doing that together, he really got on my fucking case. “Dude, you have to play. You have to make a record.” I said, “No, I’m done with records.” (laughs)

TC: You really told him that?

DT: Yeah! Around 2001, 2002 I didn’t know if I ever wanted to make a record again. Critical praise, minimal sales, I’d been screwed over by more record companies than anyone should be. Not as bad as some of the jazz guys in the old days, but pretty bad. Anyway, Tim started going at me, and I started acquiescing, and every time I acquiesced, I had a great time! Then finally, he asked me to do this tour with him a few years ago, with this band. I just had such fun. I couldn’t even begin to imagine that my discomfort in playing improvised music in public with strangers would turn into something like this. It grew! We kept doing more, heading toward these semi-regular gigs. It’s a very unusual group, because we have a set of improvisers who share certain pan-idiomatic resonances with each other, all of whom have very, very strong compositional drive.

TC: It’s pretty broad, even on the record, which is not just an improvisation, it’s very diverse.

DT: But the record wouldn’t exist without the natural improvs that are on there. There are quite a few that remain very intact. I’ve had a hard time describing this to people, because it was so irregular, the way I did it. (Laughs) I went through eight to ten hours of raw material, choosing which pieces had the most internal integrity. The ones that I felt most strongly about right off the bat, form the body of the record.

TC: When you were doing that, was it immediately clear to you, or do you have to listen to it over and over?

DT: Going through the amount of material was really, really daunting. Maintaining a memory, taking notes, you know, this nine minutes here is definitely awesome, this three minutes here… Eventually I gave up listening and every time I found something I liked, whether it was thirty seconds of music, or what really ended up happening for the record, more than five minutes of music, SO every time I came upon one of those pieces, I said “I’m working on this and this is going on the record.” (laughs)

TC: Can I ask you why you signed with ECM again?

DT: A few years ago I did a score for a movie called The Order and someone from ECM accidentally heard it before the movie came out. It was a combination of orchestral music and some solo acoustic instruments like oud and these four Bulgarian singers. It’s a very odd blend. So that person from ECM wanted to send it to Manfred [Eicher, ECM founder]. So she did get it to Manfred and he said, “I want this record!” He and I began to talk, but he was rebuffed by the film company.

TC: But that opened a dialog with him?

DT: It did, and I told him that I was most interested in doing something for a combination of instruments like that score, maybe something for ECM’s New Series . It started a dialog and it just shifted when this band began to play live. It seemed a little more practical, and I was so happy with how it feels.

TC: Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you left ECM all those years ago, it was because you wanted to do things your way and not Manfred’s way?

DT: No, it wasn’t acrimonious. I was certainly upset about it at the time. I just couldn’t get a schedule. I was in Los Angeles at the time, with a very disjointed lifestyle and getting in touch with Manfred was really difficult. I had no idea when I was going to do the next record after Cloud About Mercury , so I decided to just do something different. When we started to talk again, it was very cool, very communicative and very direct. One day he called and said, “Do you realize you’re making a record twenty years after your last ECM record?” and I said (whispering), “It’s twenty-one!” (laughs) It was an exciting moment.

TC: How was it working with David Bowie?

DT: Oh, that was one of the great creative experiences of my life. He’s not my hero, but I love the guy and working with him creatively, is a blast. I’m hoping we can do more. I’ve had a lot like that in the last ten years, where I get in these situations that are completely unsuitable for a guy like me, and yet they’re incredible.

Posted in Interviews