feature photo: Peter Gannushkin
Dropped out of the sky in time for the May 2024 Bandcamp Friday, Adityahridayam 321 is a capture of a single, mesmerizing 52-minute mindbender from the master sonic texturalist/guitarist himself, David Torn.
I’ve seen short clips of Torn just noodling around in his house that sound more fascinating than the carefully prepared works of about 98% of musicians, so spending about an hour letting it all hang out in a bar in Brooklyn with a few of his favorite toys on hand was bound to be one hell of a ride. And it is.
The front end of this adventure showcases Torn’s deft manipulations of his guitar and its pedal. His loops echo unobtrusively in the background, and he sets off these clips into that aural ether from the stream of lead lines.
The loops are not only changed out sequentially but layered on top of each other, building an intricate tapestry where a lead part gets peeled off and becomes part of it. None of that diminishes the fact that these guitar improv parts are killing, so instinctual and free of clichés. Also, it’s done with a sense of harmony and rhythm, which serves to make them effective as sampled loops.
About fourteen minutes in, a drummer can be heard, but that’s not actually a drummer: the percussive sounds come Torn’s trusty ol’ Omnichord. The jungle rhythm first heard doesn’t last long as it appears he might be giving it a dry run, before unleashing it again to give his metal guitar freakout episode more punch.
Later on, he lets the backdrop recede to a whisper as he lets loose guitar passages that are alternately lushly melodic and brutishly spiky. At one point he breaks out some nasty blues licks that are on just this side of psychotic.
David Torn’s bag of tricks knows no bounds. All of this was done without correcting overdubs later, because there’s nothing to correct. On Adityahridayam 321, he is leveraging technology and musicianship in the service of impulsive creativity like no one else can.
Run down your copy of Adityahridayam 321 from David Torn’s Bandcamp site.
*** David Torn CD’s on Amazon ***
