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Biography
Infobox musical artist| name = Naked City| image = Naked City.jpg| caption = Clockwise from left: Wayne Horvitz , John Zorn , Bill Frisell , Fred Frith , Joey Baron .| background = group_or_band| years_active = 1988–1993 (brief 2003 reunion)| origin = New York City , New York , United States| genre = Avant-garde music|Avant-garde , grindcore , experimental rock , free jazz | label = Elektra Records|Elektra Nonesuch , Avant, Earache Records|Earache , Tzadik Records|Tzadik | website =| current_members = John Zorn Bill Frisell Wayne Horvitz Fred Frith Joey Baron | past_members = Yamatsuka Eye Mike Patton Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn . Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by John Zorn|Zorn as a "composition workshop" http://www.wnur.org/jazz/performance/zornfest/zornfest-p-zorn.html Zornfest 9/93: Zorn's program notes to test the limits of composition (and improvisation) in a traditional rock music|rock band lineup. Their music incorporated recognizable elements of jazz , surf music|surf , classical music|classical , heavy metal music|heavy metal , grindcore , country music|country , punk rock and other music genre|genre s.
History
In Naked City's characteristic early style, songs were often performed at astonishingly fast tempos , drawing heavily on thrash metal and hardcore punk 's emphasis on extreme speed. Many songs were quite brief, and typically switched musical genres every few measures. One critic described Naked City's music as "jump-cutting micro- collage s of hardcore punk|hardcore , country music|country , sleazy jazz , covers of John Barry (composer)|John Barry and Ornette Coleman , brief abstract tussles — a whole city crammed into two or three minute bursts". http://www.scottmaykrantz.com/zorn03.html John Zorn's Naked City This fast-change tendency was inspired in part by Carl Stalling — a Zorn favorite — who wrote music for many Warner Brothers cartoon s (featuring Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner|Road Runner , Bugs Bunny , Daffy Duck and others); music that featured frequent shifts in tempo, theme and style.
Naked City's eponymous first album was distributed by Nonesuch Records|Elektra Nonesuch and featured a famous Weegee photograph (taken 1943) of a dead gangster on its cover along with macabre illustrations by Maruo Suehiro . There was disagreement between Zorn and the label over cover art on subsequent albums. Zorn wanted to use explicit BDSM|S& M pictures, images from 19th century medical archives, and execution photographs, most notoriously of a Death by a thousand cuts|Leng Tch'e victim; Elektra Nonesuch refused. Zorn ended his relationship with Elektra, releasing subsequent Naked City albums on Shimmy Disc and his own Avant and Tzadik (record label)|Tzadik labels.
Naked City varied their stylistic approach on later releases. The cover repertoire was expanded to include pieces from various modern classical composers such as Alexander Scriabin , Claude Debussy , Charles Ives , and Olivier Messiaen , whose works are featured on the album Grand Guignol (album)| Grand Guignol . Leng Tch'e (album)|''Leng T'che featured a single piece, over 31 minutes in length, of gruelingly slow heavy metal music|heavy metal . Torture Garden (album)| Torture Garden was made up of several " hardcore punk|hardcore miniatures", and Absinthe (album)| Absinthe was ambient music|ambient and noise textures.
Naked City found perhaps their greatest following among the fans of the many death metal , heavy metal music|heavy metal and grindcore bands with which they performed, such as Blind Idiot God , Napalm Death , Carcass (band)|Carcass and Live Skull . The appearance of "Osaka Bondage" - taken from the album Torture Garden - on the Earache sampler Grindcrusher| Grindcrusher II helped this to some extent.
Zorn discontinued Naked City after Absinthe when he felt "... the need to write music for other ensembles, in other contexts, with new ideas". A brief reunion occurred in 2003 for a few shows at European jazz festivals.
Cinematic connections
The group covered numerous film soundtrack cuts, including work by Georges Delerue . Heretic (Naked City album)|Heretic was intended as the soundtrack for a film starring Karen Finley .
The tracks "Bonehead" and "Hellraiser", from the album Grand Guignol , are featured in swapped form during the opening sequence of the Michael Haneke film Funny Games (1997 film)|Funny Games and its 2008 Funny Games (2008 film)|remake .
Filmmaker Henry Hills completed Heretic short film about Naked City and documented John Zorn, Christian Marclay and Fred Frith activities. The films were screened France in festival Vidéo Formes and by curator Jérôme Lefèvre in a program about New-York Avant-Garde in both Cinema and Music.
Black Box (album)|Black Box (contains the albums Torture Garden and ''Leng Tch'e , originally released only in Japan) (1996)
Naked City Live, Vol. 1: The Knitting Factory 1989 (2002)
Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings (Box Set) (2005)
References
reflist
External links
http://members.tripod.com/~JFGraves/Naked_City/nakedcity.html Naked City index
MusicBrainz artist|id=fc4dea85-3998-4130-a56e-907689160480|name=Naked City
Naked City Category:American jazz ensembles Category:American experimental musical groups Category:Avant-garde metal musical groups Category:Free improvisation ensembles Category:American grindcore musical groups Category:Musical groups established in 1988 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1993 Category:Musical quintets Category:Earache Records artists Category:American progressive rock music groups Category:Tzadik Records artists Category:John Zorn Category:Avant-garde jazz ensembles
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