DAVID TORN double LP ‘now i imagine a place not the same’ out today May 29 on Kou Records! New video & live dates.

DAVID TORN - Double LP ‘now i imagine a place not the same’ - Out today on Kou Records - listen here - Shares new video for "inconclusive" - NY release show at Kou Records Festival next month

Photo credit: Peter Gannushkin (click for high res) Today, David Torn announces ‘now i imagine a place not the same’ on Kou Records, an expansive and deeply personal new double LP - a rare late-career statement from one of experimental music’s most singular voices. Along with the release, he also shares a new video, and details of a live show as part of Kou Record's festival in New York next month - details below. Across decades of boundary-pushing work in experimental music, improvisation, and film, Torn has continually redefined the expressive possibilities of the electric guitar. ‘now i imagine a place not the same’ feels less like a conventional release than a fully immersive listening experience — unfolding in long-form movements shaped by texture, space, and emotional depth. Intimate yet expansive, the album moves between fractured melody, dense atmospherics, and moments of stark quiet, capturing Torn at his most distilled and exploratory. Recorded by Randall Dunn and Chris Bittner and mixed and produced by Dunn, the album places a strong emphasis on sonic environment and duration, allowing Torn’s intricate signal processing and improvisational language to fully breathe. Released as part of Kou Records’ artist-driven cohort model — which prioritises process, collaboration, and long-term artistic development — it stands as both a continuation and a deepening of Torn’s singular practice. To celebrate the release, today he also shares a new video to accompany the deeply expressive track "inconclusive", made by visual artist Nate Boyce. Watch the video for "inconclusive": https://youtu.be/94exU4p1dS4 “now i imagine a place not the same” streaming & buy links: https://lnk.to/L2HNPX The physical edition of the record is accompanied by a series of original paintings by illustrator Arik Roper, whose work appears across the front cover, gatefold interior, and a commissioned portrait of Torn. The record also includes a concrete poem written by Stephen O’Malley -whose band Sunn O))) David Torn supported at a special show in New York last month- alongside liner notes by Randall Dunn reflecting on the sessions that shaped the recording. ‘now i imagine a place not the same’ revisits the raw electricity of Torn’s early processing language while carrying it forward with the perspective of decades of exploration. Visceral yet weightless, it deepens his long-standing dialogue between alternate tunings, looping systems, and touch-sensitive electronics. Melody, noise, and atmosphere move through one another in a continuously shifting field of tone.   A pioneering figure in electric guitar processing, Torn has exerted a quiet but far-reaching influence on both film scoring and contemporary electro-acoustic music. In addition to his own scores, he has made formative creative contributions to works by Carter Burwell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Cliff Martinez, Howard Shore, and Mark Isham. Across these collaborations, his guitar language helped shape a cinematic vocabulary that feels atmospheric, psychological, and texturally alive.   Beyond film, Torn’s presence spans an unusually broad range of artists, including David Bowie, Madonna, John Legend, Tori Amos, k.d. lang, Don Cherry, Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, and David Sylvian. His recordings for ECM Records further defined an immersive, spatial approach to processed guitar that continues to resonate across generations.   Tracked in close collaboration with Dunn, the sessions privilege immediacy and physical presence. Each piece unfolds as composition-minded improvisation, with Torn treating everything within reach as musical material: strings, pickups, amplifiers, external electronics, voice, resonant surfaces, and the surrounding space itself. As Torn writes:   “My approach to these peri-composerly improvisations was pretty basic: everything in my view, grasp, and reach became an instrument for tone and feeling. Strings, pickups, electronics, the amplifiers, even a stone or two — anything could enter the music. Sometimes a sound would appear suddenly; sometimes an accident or interruption would open the door. The important thing was trusting that shape and feeling would emerge, and following it until the music revealed itself whole.”   Rather than composing toward fixed outcomes, Torn allows form to emerge through feedback and repetition, absorbing intended and unintended sounds into a living structure. Foundational tools from his formative processing years — alternate tunings, looping logic, tube saturation — return not as nostalgia but as active materials. Intimate yet expansive, now i imagine a place not the same captures an artist fully inhabiting his singular language: melodic, exploratory, and grounded in touch and electricity. It is not a retrospective glance backward, but a declaration in the present tense. David Torn will play a solo set at Roulette in NY on June 24th as part of Kou Records' festival. More information and tickets here. ‘now i imagine a place not the same’ track list: 1. ice-shock cold of illusion (06:33) 2. shapes of newborn warming stars (05:56) 3. the red door #1 (01:50) 4. its own dimension (05:09) 5. within dimension behind dimension (05:10) 6. inconclusive (03:47) 7. the road (past the beehive) to the river (08:38) 8. when the birds flock 'round my head (06:42) 9. gold and its oxide (07:41) 10. bones of home, fly east... (11:27) 11. the (once green) red door #2 (08:18)