by Thom Jurek 　　Prezens is the first recording guitarist and producer David Torn has recorded under his own name for ECM Records in the 21 years since his Cloud About Mercury was issued. His sonic explorations have always been at least as much an interest to him as his playing. As a result he has stretched to the limits of what the guitar can, or even perhaps should, do in realms where it sounded like he was playing anything but his chosen instrument. Most recently, Torn has performed in Tim Berne's Science Fiction and Hard Cell ensembles and played with Drew Gress and Dave Douglas. Torn enlists Berne and the other members of his Science Fiction band: keyboard wizard Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey, minus guitarist Marc Ducret. The end result, while wildly adventurous and full of astonishing improvisations, is also full of some of Torn's most "inside" playing. The opener "AK" begins with a Frippertronics phrase hypnotically asserted by use of a digital delay before giving way to a mutational Delta blues riff, repeated endlessly before opening up to a kind of muted question mark phrase. Rainey's cymbals enter along with an extended line by Berne while Taborn digs into the B-3 with the guitar riff playing under the mix as a guide; the band takes off, exploring the edges of the open chord, never leaving its rhythmic pulse behind for long. Taborn's soloing is deep in the pocket, reminiscent of John Patton, and Berne begins to play all around the blues, his sense of time perfect. Rainey shuffles around them all, stuttering cymbals and snares. When Torn comes back in with the riff, it's a sick distorted mess worthy of a solid heavy metal intro and he layers a screaming minimal solo on top of that. Whoa! The brief "Rest and Unrest" with its spoken word vocal walks the line between Ali Farka Touré's guitar sound and Torn's own mitigated soundscape world once more echoing the blues.... Read More...