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Leng Tch'e (album)

Leng Tch'e
Leng Tch'e (album).JPG
EP by Naked City
Released November 1, 1992
Recorded January 11, 1992
Genre Avant-garde
Sludge metal
Drone
Length 31:38
Label Toys Factory
Producer John Zorn
Naked City chronology
Heretic
(1992) Heretic1992
Leng Tch'e
(1992)
Radio
(1993)Radio1993
John Zorn chronology
Elegy
(1992) Elegy1992
Leng Tch'e
(1992) Leng Tch'e1992
Kristallnacht
(1993) Kristallnacht1993

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 City's previously material, which was known for its fast tempo and rapid transitions between a variety of heterogeneous styles, Leng Tch'e is a more avant-garde take on sludge metal. It was issued along with Torture Garden, a collection of grindcore pieces, in the double-disc collection Black Box. The single song was written in five bars; and then stretched out and played as a 32-minute dirge.

The cover photograph features a "death by a thousand cuts" (i.e. leng tch'e) victim, and this is also the theme of the piece.

From the liner notes:

Research into the relationship between violence and the sacred led Zorn to the writings 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 ecstasy on the man's face haunted 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 photographic 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 patient 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."

Composition by John Zorn



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