New limited edition self-released album from the greatest drummer on the planet, Chris Corsano. Chris Corsano Band is Corsano’s solo visioning of a free rock group, playing drums, bass and guitar all himself and overdubbing to create a now sound take on the rock/roll instants of Vampire Belt. His playing here is closest to his work with Rangda and as if to cement the umbilical he throws in a raging cover version of Sun City Girls’ classic “Esoterica Of Abyssynia” from Torch Of The Mystics. Recorded over the space of three years in the USA and Scotland, High And Dry sees Corsano channeling the kind of epic out of focus string work of Jutok Kaneko and Rudolph Grey while levitating the whole deal into space with some of his most fucked-up drum sounds. The guest appearance from The Wizard on bongos, still ‘hot’ from Frank Lowe’s epic Black Beings ESP-Disk date, is just too much gravy. Handmade covers, every one unique. Highly recommended.

Stunning new self-released album from free percussionist Chris Corsano: Cut is an all-acoustic series of settings for variously-augmented drum kit, with Corsano using metal, violin bows, bells, melodic, plastic tubing, various mouthpieces, triangles, funnels and metal racks to generate amazing kinetic compositions that touch on classic fire music strategies while factoring in all sorts of weird compositional gambits. Indeed, the set touches more on classic American musician/inventor traditions than anything that might pass for free noise, with an attention to subtly-coded rhythms and the tonal aspect of the skins that is almost Partch-ian. Still, Corsano can rock the bandstand like no one else and there are plenty of passages of ferociously detonated time-signatures as well as some spectacular heavy metal drone eviscerations. Indeed, there's more high-energy music on this solo drum set than in most groups' back catalogues. A stunning tour-de-force, an object lesson in the endless potential for sonic reduction that lies in the naked wrasslin' of one man and his instrument and easily the peak of Corsano's solo experiments to date - highly recommended!