Discography ================================================================================================================ Country Label Format Catalog Year ================================================================================================================ Japan Toy's Factory CD TFCK-88604 1992, November, 1 USA Tzadik Records 2xCD, Archival Series TZ 7312-2 1997, April, 22 USA Tzadik Records CD, Archival Series TZ 7312 2010, October ================================================================================================================ Track Listing: ================================================================================================================ 1. Leng Tch'e 31:37 Tzadik Edition as: Black Box: Torture Garden / Leng Tch'e ================================================================================================================ Yamataka Eye – Vocals John Zorn – Alto sax, Vocals Bill Frisell – Guitar Fred Frith – Bass Joey Baron – Drums Wayne Horvitz – Keyboards Recorded in January 11, 1992 Alec Head - Recording Oz Fritz - Mixing Bob Ludwig - Mastering John Zorn - Producer Tomoyo T.L. - Artwork [Cover] Published by Theatre of Musical Optics, BMI Thanks - Patton, The Melvins. ================================================================================================================ Leng Tch'e is the fourth release from John Zorn's band Naked City. It consists of a single track, running at just over half an hour. It was first released on the Japanese Toys Factory label in 1992. Unlike Naked Ci- ty's previously material, which was known for its fast tempo and rapid transitions between a variety of hete- rogeneous styles, Leng Tch'e is a more avant-garde take on sludge metal. It was issued along with Torture Ga- rden, a collection of grindcore pieces, in the double-disc collection Black Box. The cover photograph features a 'death by a thousand cuts' victim, and this is also the theme of the piece. Bataille quote From the liner notes: "Research into the relationship between violence and the sacred led Zorn to the wri- tings of Georges Bataille. The historical photographs used in Leng Tch'e (found in Tears of Eros) were taken circa 1905 in Beijing to document the last public execution utilizing Leng Tch'e (hundred pieces) which dates from the Manchu dynasty. Given opium to extend the victim's life during the arduous process, the look of ecs- tasy on the man's face haunted Bataille: "This photograph had a decisive role in my life. I have never stopped being obsessed by this image of pain, at once ecstatic and intolerable. I wonder what the Marquis de Sade would have thought of this image, Sade who dreamed of torture, (which was inaccessible to him) but who never witnessed an actual torture session. In one way or another this image was incessantly before his eyes. But Sade would have wanted to see it in solitude, at least in relative solitude, without which the ecstatic and voluptuous effect is inconceivable. What I sud- denly saw, and what imprisoned me in anguish — but which at the same time delivered me from it — was the ide- ntity of these perfect contraries, divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror. And this is my inevitable conclusion to a history of eroticism." — Georges Bataille" The liner notes present an abridgment of Bataille's remarks on p. 206-207 of Tears of Eros. Bataille also wrote about the photograph in Inner Experience: "In particular, I would gaze at the photogr- aphic image - or sometimes the memory which I have of it - of a Chinese man who must have been tortured in my lifetime. Of this torture, I had had in the past a series of successive representations. In the end, the pat- ient writhed, his chest flayed, arms and legs cut off at the elbows and at the knees. His hair standing on end, hideous, hagard, striped with blood, beautiful as a wasp."