Leng Tch'e (album)  

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Leng Tch'e (1992) is the fourth release from the band Naked City consisting of one track, running at half an hour. The cover photograph features a 'death by a thousand cuts' 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:

"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 suddenly saw, and what imprisoned me in anguish — but which at the same time delivered me from it — was the identity of these perfect contraries, divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror. And this is my inevitable conclusion to a history of eroticism." — Georges Bataille, Tears of Eros, translation Peter Connor (San Francisco: City Lights, 1989)

Track listing

1. "Leng Tch'e" (John Zorn) – 31:37

Personnel

• John Zorn – alto sax, vocals
• Bill Frisell – guitar
• Wayne Horvitz – keyboards
• Fred Frith – bass
• Joey Baron – drums
• Yamataka Eye – vocals

Liner Notes

• Published by Theatre of Musical Optics, BMI
• Produced by John Zorn
• Recorded by Alec Head
• Mastered by Bob Ludwig
• Design: Tomoyo T.L.
• Thanks: Patton, the Melvins