Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt – Made Out of Sound LP

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LP version. “Sadly, many will hearChris Corsano&Bill Orcutt‘s latest LP,Made Out of Sound, as ‘not-jazz,’ though it would be more aptly described as ‘not-not-jazz.’ In a better world, it would warrant above-the-fold reviews in Downbeat, or an appearance onDavid Sanborn‘s late-night show (if someone would only give it back to him). More likely, we can hope for a haiku review onByron Coley‘s Twitter timeline to sufficiently connect the various improvised terrains trodden by this long-time duo — but if you’ve been able to listen past the overmodulated icepick fidelity ofHarry Pussy, it should surprise you not an iota that Orcutt’s style is rooted as much in the fractal melodies ofTraneandTayloras it is in Delta syrup or Tin Pan Alley glitz. As for Corsano, well, it may seem daft to call this particular record ‘jazz’ (because duh, it has a drummer), but to me Corsano is beyond jazz, almost beyond music, his ambidextrous, octopoid technique grappling many stylistic levers and spraying a torrent of light from every direction. Corsano’s ferocity has elevated many ‘mere’ improv records to transcendence, but here he’s crafted his polyrhythms within more narrative channels, bringing to mind his ‘mannered’ playing in the lamentedFlower-Corsanoduo. It’s not ‘groove’ playing precisely, but it follows many grooves simultaneously, much like Orcutt’s own melodic musings — which is why they’re so naturally lock-in-key here. Which maybe makes it all the more surprising thatMade Out of Soundwas in fact recorded in different rooms on different coasts at different times, and stitched together by Orcutt on his desktop. Corsano recorded the drums in Ithaca, NY, and (as Orcutt states), ‘I didn’t edit them at all. I overdubbed two guitar tracks, panned left/right. I’d listen to the drums a couple times, pick a tuning, then improvise a part, thinking of the first track as backing and the second as the ‘lead’, though those are pretty fluid terms. I was watching the waveforms as I was recording, so I could see when a crescendo was coming or when to bring it down.’ Fluidity ties the tracks together. With a little more groove and a little less around-the-beat maneuvering, one could almost hear the boiling harmonic layers asMiles-oid in ‘Man Carrying Thing,’ but with new-foundSharrockian modalities, Corsano accentuating the tumbling nature of the falling notes. The Sharrock vein continues with ‘How to Cook a Wolf,’ itsBlind Willie-esque melodic simplicity and repetition extrapolated 360-style in a repetitive descending riff that falls intoCippolina-isms (by way ofVerlaine) until the end crashes upon the shore. Much like Orcutt’s last solo album,Odds Against Tomorrow(PAL 056CD/LP, 2019), there’s a gentler, almost pastoral flow to some tracks (‘Some Tennessee Jar,’ ‘A Port in Air,’ ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking’) that calls to mind the mixolydian swamplands ofLonnie Liston Smith— but unlikeOdds, other tracks (‘The Thing Itself’) smash that same lyricism into overdriven, multi-dimensional melodic clumps that push several vector envelopes at once in anInterstellar Spacevein. With the help of Corsano, Orcutt has managed to slither even further out of the noise/improv pigeonhole lazy listeners/writers keep trying to shove him into. Looking at the back cover ofMade Out of Sound, we should not see Orcutt hurling a guitar into the air with post-punk bravado, Corsano toiling behind him in the engine room — we should witness an instrument levitating from his hands, rising on invisible major-key tendrils of melody, fired by percussion, spiraling into an invisible event horizon…” —Tom Carter