Energetic and frenzied this music cleans my soul. A couple of years ago this duo put together an incredible disc and this is their current follow-up, as they say, with many of the same characteristics that made those improvised sounds so attractive. These have a more contemporary sparkle but like that other music-timeless.
With Made Out of Sound, Orcutt and Corsano return with a slightly different kind of record. They recorded the album in 2020 during the pandemic, so instead of raising a holy racket together in one space, they played separately. Corsano cut his drum parts on his own and then sent them to Orcutt, who improvised while listening to what Corsano had laid down. In notes with the release, Ocrutt says, “I was watching the waveforms as I was recording, so I could see when a crescendo was coming or when to bring it down.” Orcutt overdubbed an additional guitar, relegating one to some notion of “rhythm” and another “lead,” though what you hear doesn’t match any conventional idea of that distinction.
So Made Out of Sound is a hybrid piece—improvised, but with advance warning of where the music is going, which brings an element of composition. And it turns out that this combination of approaches makes for some gorgeously life-affirming music. These pieces are certainly prettier and less aggressive than those on Brace Up!, and that’s mostly up to Orcutt. During more relaxed moments, they bring to mind the spindly probing of the Tren Brothers, the Dirty Three side project comprising guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White. Corsano’s free playing seems at all times to hover in the space between a steady beat, an explosive roll, an exploratory warm-up, and an ecstatic solo; he hits his kit with the same pace and force as their last outing, but here it’s a touch less pugnacious, perhaps owing to the room he recorded in. And Orcutt’s guitars are less cutting and sharp, with a warmer tone that rings and clangs while notes hang in the air, as if we are hearing a recording of a giant wind chime left outside during a hurricane.
When Corsano and Orcutt collaborate live, the reaction is similarly exothermic. The two feed off of each other's energy, manically filling all of the available sound space with their glorious squall. In order to stabilize the reaction that produces nitroglycerin (i.e. to prevent an instant explosion) it must be cooled. Since the pair laid their parts separately you could surmise that the high energy feedback loop that drives their live sets was severed, and so on Made of Sound we're left with a more stable and refined product that is every bit as explosive.
Orcutt’s approach to the electric guitar here plays like a punk Bill Frisell suffering with restless leg syndrome, i.e. an amorphous and strangely familiar blooming of folksy colors with a notably persistent, compulsive twitch. Corsano plays in an expansive yet suggestive way that yields a lot of space in which to maneuver but also leaves an evocative trail of breadcrumbs for his buddy. The first piece "Some Tennessee Jar" is an easy-flowing river of turbulent telecaster jangle that spills amidst the loosely stitched stretches of Corsano’s suppel dynamics. The duo tense up on "Man Carrying Thing", hurrying the tempo and intricacies of their playing into big, wiry tangles. This quality is further amplified by Orcutt's use of overdubbing, in which his barbed licks overlap and cluster within Corsano's surges of rhythm. "How to Cook a Wolf" comes close to conjuring the wild energy of their live sets in a two minute dirge of prickly guitar and drums that gets more spasmodic as it plays out. "Thirteen Ways of Looking" has a dense, almost pastoral feel that hangs in the air like humidity looking for a cold surface on which to condense. The brooding "Distance of Sleep" is probably the best single cut on the album. It's high drama that plays out over a meager three-plus minutes (video below). On "The Thing Itself" Corsano roils amidst Orcutt's chiming chords and pointy runs in an extended feud against a persistent hammer-on. And finally, the album closes out with the shimmering "A Port in Air", which returns to the billowing drift of the first track and finds Orcutt slicing lines of worried notes amongst the swarth and thicket of Corsano's tumultuous circumscription.
The production of this album is unusual for what is, on its face, an improv record. Corsano recorded the drum tracks in Ithaca, NY and sent them to Orcutt, who proceeded to improvise dual/duelling guitar tracks in California, watching the waveforms to prepare for peaks and valleys that he might normally predict by watching Corsano himself. This approach, which might bring stilted results out of other players, seems to have instead worked a special magic on these two. The performances on Made Out of Sound showcase an even greater sensitivity than is normal for either player, and more of a willingness to dip at least one pinky toe into the dreaded groove. Not that this is an Eddie Harris record or anything, of course, but neither is it 100% wailing free-for-all.
Orcutt's Sonny Sharrock/Rudolph Grey soundblasts are still a part of Made Out of Sound, as are his splintered evocations of folk and tin pan alley melody. The squall here is tenderized, though, by a greater emphasis up-the-neck leads that more recall nothing so much as Television's majestic interplay, and buoyed by crumpled riffage at times comparable to the fabled wriggle of Zoot Horn Rollo and Antennae Jimmy Semens on Trout Mask Replica. Corsano is consistently one of the most musical drummers in the improv world, but he brings an extra-special polyrhythmic pummel here, really making the kit sing and inviting Orcutt's best impulses in doing so.
While it is not surprising that these two work well together, there are surprises here in exactly how they work together, and what one brings out of the other. 'Thirteen Ways of Looking' is curiously both kinetic and elegiac, like the extended solo break in 'Marquee Moon' tumbling down a flight of spiral stairs. 'The Thing Itself' indulges in repetitive, hypnotic guitar figures that evoke a platonic ideal of "post-rock" that that nebulous form has never, to my knowledge, achieved, and even touches the hem of the aforementioned Sharrock's garment (ca. Ask The Ages).
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