Sun of Goldfinger, the Son of Prezens? More than a decade ago, guitarist and texturalist extraordinaire David Torn had assembled a quartet with avant-garde saxophone star Tim Berne, keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey for an unforgettable album that deftly combined improvisation with technological after-the-fact alterations. Prezens was a step in the development of Torn’s artistic vision, but a large step because he found such a communion with these open-minded musicians.
The heart of that communion is the special connection between Torn and Berne, with Torn architecting soundscapes that provide the perfect fodder for Berne’s uniquely extended technique, and that’s provided the basis for their later project together, Sun of Goldfinger. The only addition to the two this time around is a critical one: Berne’s Snakeoil drummer Ches Smith.
David Torn hadn’t performed with Smith for as long as Berne, but the three had been perfecting their chemistry since 2010 and after a 2017 European tour where the partnership coalesced into another level, Torn felt that the time was ripe to cull their improvs into a group of electronica-enhanced works (as he had done for Prezens) and release it as a studio album.
There are only three long tracks on Sun of Goldfinger each running about twenty-three minutes long, which better reflects the lengthy, explorative excursions into the sonic ether that are performed on stage. As with the prior Torn/Berne collaboration, half of the art is assembling and altering these spontaneous performances into extended compositions with manifold layers of complexity, an ability for which Torn really has no equal.
A persistent knocking on wood is the only thing that provides continuity for the first part of “Eye Meddle.” As usual for David Torn, he creates a mesh of remote, industrial electronic and guitar sounds and Berne always seems to know just where to fit his alto sax into this otherworldly brew. When Berne’s attitude gets more assertive, searching and ultimately, urgent, Torn finds himself adjusting to Berne. That’s when — ten minutes in — the drone and the indiscriminate noises in the background turn upward and Smith is finally lured into conventional time-keeping (though Torn had altered his drums so that they sound alien). With Berne now settled into a simple and dire figure, Torn’s metal side shows its teeth. It’s easy to forget that during this time with all these ghoulish sounds swirling about that there’s a dandy lil’ groove at the center of it all…a groove that itself breaks apart and mutates on this continually-evolving song.
Torn loops in Berne’s sax cries on “Soften The Blow” and then matches them on his guitar as Berne moves further along in his excursion, creating an illusion of three saxophone players. After the buildup and full release, all that’s left is a pulse but soon Torn along with Smith and Berne gather momentum toward another murky cataclysm.
Early on “Spartan, Before It Hit,” the stateliness of a string quartet is heard and no, this isn’t sampling wizardry but the real thing: Martha Mooke, Amy Kimball, Rachel Golub and Leah Coloff are brought on board to supply the authentic chamber music element. David Torn wasn’t done adding other participants outside the core trio; Mike Baggetta and Ryan Ferreira make this a three guitar lineup and Taborn rejoins Torn and Berne on this occasion. But despite the inclusion of seven additional musicians to the trio, there are moments of voids intentionally left behind, as the music swells and recedes along an evolutionary path.
As with all Torn-led projects, there is so much going on submerged below the surface because the textures he creates are so detailed, you could listen to this a hundred times and still not sufficiently dissect the music. That esoteric quality of pieces shaped from sounds conjured up in the moment by elite improvisation specialists makes the supremely creative Sun of Goldfinger unlike anything else out there … apart from other David Torn records.
Sun of Goldfinger is scheduled for release March 1, 2019 from ECM Records.
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