David Torn

Cloud About Mercury is the 1987 quartet album by guitarist David Torn, a record whose sound sits close to progressive rock. Its rhythm section, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford, was half of one incarnation of King Crimson, and with trumpeter Mark Isham the music also leans toward the experimental end of ambient. "Everything is in a state of transition," Torn explained, and mercury was his image for that constant change.

Torn's first album as a leader for the label was Best Laid Plans, a 1985 duo with Geoffrey Gordon. Cloud About Mercury was his second. Torn plays electric and acoustic guitars. Isham plays trumpet, piccolo trumpet, flugelhorn and synthesizer, Levin Chapman Stick and synthesizer bass, and Bruford Simmons and synthesizer drums and percussion. The sessions took place in March 1986 at Audio International in London with engineer Andy Jackson. The album was then mixed by Jan Erik Kongshaug at Rainbow Studio in Oslo and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Torn wrote four of the six pieces, and the other two are credited to all four players. The opener, Suyafhu Skin... Snapping the Hollow Reed, sets detuned guitars and a bubbling synthesizer against Isham's long trumpet lines and Levin's grounded bass. 3 Minutes of Pure Entertainment, which in fact lasts seven, is a mid-tempo groove with soaring, sustained guitar. The closing Network of Sparks moves from the brief electric unease of The Delicate Code into the warm, slowly layered space of Egg Learns to Walk... Suyafhu Seal.

Bruford's affection for the record has lasted. To this day, he has said, Torn's guitar on 3 Minutes of Pure Entertainment "makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck". Writing for ECM Reviews in 2012, Tyran Grillo called it Torn's most personal statement to that date and a record that "represents a pinnacle of Torn's craft". Two decades later Torn returned to ECM with Prezens in 2007 and the solo Only Sky in 2015.

This CD belongs to ECM's Touchstones series, which brings key albums from the label's back catalogue back into print in card sleeves. ECM 1322, first released in 1987, this edition 2019.