Has there ever been a guitar hero with a more misleading moniker than David Torn? With his violent, evocative surname, you expect Torn to really shred, to take that fretboard and rip it to pieces. And he does that, but not the way you might expect. His is a more considered virtuosity, a style that stresses mood and amorphous cloud technique over light-speed pyrotechnics. Torn doesn't rip. He weaves, he pulls, he draws.
"Why would a first-rate guitarist want to sound like a third-rate saxophonist?" someone once asked, rhetorically, of guitar-synth whiz Alan Holdsworth. While no less adept at transforming his axe into something else, Torn has taken a more tasteful tack. He comes from the Robert Fripp and Michael Brook school of style and discipline, which is why his playing has been enlisted so often as backdrops for film scores and for experimental-minded pop stars like David Sylvian and Bowie.
Prezens marks Torn's return to ECM, for whom he recorded his breakthrough Cloud About Mercury, for the first time in over two decades. He's joined on the disc by the capable team of Tim Berne on alto sax, Tom Rainey on drums, and Craig Taborn on keys, who as a trio comprise Berne's Hard Cell but here fill out Torn's ranks as a full-fledged (albeit bass-free) jazz quartet. Not that "jazz" really does the music justice. If only it were that simple.
Part of the fun of Prezens is dissecting its various components, especially given such a shape-shifting presence as Torn. While there's no confusing Torn with Berne (one of the best skronkers in the business) or Rainey, he and Taborn seem to be sharing duties when it comes to harder-to-place sci-fi effects and general otherworldly sounds, at least until the inevitable fireworks erupt.
When they do, several minutes into the first track "Ak", the effect is a brief but shining free-for-all, a jazz-blues jam where the players are encouraged to step on each other's toes. Yet nobody trips. They understand how to give one another just enough room to navigate, and when they do overlap, they do so sympathetically, with each instrument supporting the other in sometimes surprising ways.
It's Torn and Taborn who provide the bulk of the atmosphere in "Rest & Unrest", which brings to mind what the Orb might have sounded like as a jazz outfit. But it's Torn and Berne who start out with the mood-setting in "Structural Functions of Prezens", an epic track that sounds almost aimless and wistful until Rainey takes over, his snare cracks and cymbal crashes like the patter of rain on the windowsill during a heavy storm.
"Bulbs" drifts closer to prog territory, not unlike some of the more recent iterations and side projects of King Crimson, the sound of the 21st century schizoid man taking his meds, mellowing out a little, then suddenly realizing he took the wrong pills before really freaking out. "Sink" briefly brings the funk before shifting in and out of phase, making room for a serpentine guitar solo that sets Torn adrift in a sea of electro-acoustic strangeness before bringing it all back to a warped kitchen-sink groove.
The epic "Neck-Deep in the Harrow..." is another great example of how the players can balance staying busy without cluttering up their music, the compositions shifting and tilting every few minutes. Noir atmosphere. Metallic outbursts. Drowsy space music. Blues dirges. Dubby detours. Electronic deconstruction. Lesser musicians might have gotten lost up their own asses. Torn and his band make all these twists and turns make sense, and tracks like the syncopated album closer "Transmit Regardless" give recent Radiohead a run for their money.
Track after track, the same questions are raised: What are those low groans that keep bubbling up from the depths? Is that Torn sounding like a flute, or Taborn? (Or, for that matter, Berne?) And who's in charge of the digital distortion? How much is live? How much is looped? How much is composed, how much is improvised, and how much was pieced together after the fact, Teo Macero style?
In one sense, you can only answer these questions watching the group's live interplay, in the flesh. On disc, the best you can say is that whatever they're up to and whoever's doing it, it sounds right, so it's best to just go with it. Indeed, Prezens provides ample proof that you needn't be traveling at top speed before everything becomes a blur, and that a blur can often be just as beguiling and beautiful as more sharply defined trips. Just be sure to put on your thinking cap and hold on tight.
