John Zorn

New York, December 31, 1989. As a crucial year in reshaping the history of the 20th century draws to a close, so does Ed Koch's third term. Under the decade-long administration of the Democratic mayor, the Big Apple has radically changed its skin: the city on the verge of bankruptcy, terrorized by rampaging gangs and by the homicidal madness of David Berkowitz, is on its way to becoming the far more palatable metropolis we know today. As in similar cases, one could argue at length about who paid the price for this massive "regeneration", but that's not the subject here.

At the national level, however, there's little to celebrate. Straddling the Reagan and Bush Sr. eras, the country is in pieces: inequality is galloping, AIDS still rages, and the warning signs of the looming Gulf War are growing heavier. In the slums of Downtown New York, accordingly, a foul mood still lingers. As in the days of no wave, the musical response is as harsh as it is sophisticated: channeling anguish into intellectual deconstruction rather than blind rage.

The John Zorn roaming those dark streets is not yet the darling of highbrow festivals: crew cut, biker jacket and military trousers, he likes to carry his sax case under his arm like a submachine gun, more Luciano Lutring than Tony Montana. Diplomatic relations between jazz and rock have never been strangers to viciousness, but the ultra-fusion of this bespectacled wandering Jew raises the bar of brutality. If James Chance bet everything on atonality, Zorn's focus shifts decisively toward violence. The reference point is no longer (post-)punk, but extreme metal. The bullets are no longer disjointed sobs, but shrieks that drill through your temples. The speed goes from that of a jet to that of a Concorde.

Brutality, then, but geared toward smashing barriers rather than imposing visions. The other watchword is therefore eclecticism: with free jazz and hardcore working the flanks from opposite sides, no genre is immune to the infection. And if the idea is to rewrite the vocabulary, what better raw material than film soundtracks, so generous with themes that burrow into our collective imagination? Morricone, Mancini, Goldsmith, Barry: lined up against the wall, shot, revived, repurposed. Whistleable melodies become torture, in that limbo between homage and mockery favored by the shrewdest musical terrorism. The dictatorship of chaos is the vehicle for restructuring muzak. And as in any respectable show, there have to be interludes — in this case not to defuse the tension but to let it fester: the grindcore injections administered between one episode and the next feel less like variety-show numbers than infernal jingles. The stance is perfectly summed up by one of the titles: "Hammerhead".

The cast, in turn, must be able to navigate between intransigence and pliability: the gooey guitar of Bill Frisell, the elusive bass of Fred Frith, the sneaky drumming of Joey Baron, the quotation-happy keyboards of Wayne Horvitz. As a poisoned cherry on top, the hysterical outbursts of Yamataka Eye, the vocal equivalent (?) of the bandleader's reed. The title (for now just the album's, later also the ensemble's) is bluntly apt: "Naked City", which is like saying Burroughs + Chandler. Front cover in black and white ("Corpse With Revolver" by American photojournalist Weegee), back cover in comic-strip form (an illustration by the gruesome mangaka Suehiro Maruo), and the bloody dish is served. If jazz is nocturnal music par excellence, Zorn's is a hymn to the night of the soul, both individual and collective.

And now let's get to the content. Cinema (pitch-black), but not only that. The themes from "Le Clan des Siciliens", "Le Mépris", "Chinatown", even "James Bond" are sacrificed without sacrificing their epos, but the composer goes as far as inventing apocryphal ones (the opening "Batman", a vademecum of all things Zorn-ian if ever there was one) or crowning new ones by digging through the standards of avant-garde jazz ("Lonely Woman" by the master Ornette Coleman, THE anti-harmonic manifesto, here presented in a medley with the no less epochal "School Work"). The titles provoke and/or threaten ("Igneous Ejaculation", "Blood Duster", "Demon Sanctuary"), yet it's hard not to notice the thoroughly Jewish irony with which surf ("You Will Be Shot"), swing ("Latin Quarter"), country ("N.Y. Flat Top Box") and bop ("Inside Straight") are parodied. Reduced to caricature or to pulp, the musical knowledge of the short century can already consider itself retired.

Inextricable controversies weigh on the actual release date: the year we've indicated is the recording year, on which there seem to be no doubts. The Naked City experiment would continue for a handful of years (starting with the follow-up "Grand Guignol", this time dedicated to contemporary classical music, which would earn Michael Haneke the chilling comment of "Funny Games"), after which the unstoppable workhorse would move on to other things, triumphing artistically with the harrowing "Kristallnacht" (1992) and "commercially" with the Masada saga and the Tzadik epic. But the radicalism, imagination and sheer fun of these 26 tracks would remain unmatched.

The culmination of a decade devoted to impossible contaminations, "Naked City" seals jazz's passage into its worst afterlife with a wealth of ideas and a display of talent unseen since the days of "Bitches Brew".

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02/03/2025