Guitarist and composer David Torn has jazz connections with contemporary pioneers such as Jan Garbarek, but he’s equally at home alongside rock alumni such as Lou Reed. Torn led a jazz album with Tim Berne’s group on ECM eight years ago, but its successor, Only Sky, is a vast, stormy, sometimes folksy, sometimes splinteringly Hendrixian soundscape, created in real time by his guitar, electric oud and electronic gizmos alone, and it’s full of startling turns. An oud intervention like a flamenco guitar arrives unexpectedly among deep orchestral drones; a lurching country song gets progressively distortion-laden and dirtier; bleeping electronics turn to churning ostinato patterns like massed cellos, before a beating-wings clamour recedes to a hum; echoing church-organ chords mingle with a haunting guitar ballad; and A Goddamned Specific Unbalance might convince fans of close guitar relative Bill Frisell that Torn has more straight-guitar harmonic variations up his sleeve than he lets on. It’s unique music, and very personal for all its electronic firepower.
