Naked City cover

Naked City

Released

The 1990 debut by Zorn’s quintet — Bill Frisell on guitar, Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, Fred Frith on bass, Joey Baron on drums, with Boredoms vocalist Eye Yamatsuka howling and shrieking up front — brought his jump-cut aesthetic out of the New York avant-garde and onto college radio. His own furious compositions, which caromed from country to free jazz to dub to grindcore with little narrative logic but energy to spare, were balanced by romantic versions of movie themes from Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, and more, plus a take on Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” that features a driving rock backbeat.

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
New York, Fall 1974 cover

New York, Fall 1974

Anthony Braxton
The Sky Below cover

The Sky Below

Miles Okazaki
Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley cover

Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley

Ben Allison, Steve Cardenas, Ted Nash
Some Other Stuff cover

Some Other Stuff

Grachan Moncur III
Room cover

Room

Julian Lage, Nels Cline
Sleeping Tapes cover

Sleeping Tapes

Jeff Bridges
Codebook cover

Codebook

Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer
Verisimilitude cover

Verisimilitude

Tyshawn Sorey