Immolation/Immersion Album

Fans of modern
fire-breathing jazz rejoice, for a true meeting and melding of the minds
is at play. Immolation/Immersion is the inaugural recording
of what will hopefully be more blasts of fury and filigree by three leading
lights of improvised music - guitarist Nels
Cline, saxophonist Wally Shoup, and young percussionist-on-the-rise
Chris Corsano.
Nels Cline should need
no introduction. Be it the improvised fervor of his Nels Cline Trio
or Nels Cline Singers, forward-thinking rock by Geraldine
Fibbers, his collaborations with Carla
Bozulich in experimental outfit Scarnella and via his weeping
lap steel found on her remake of The Red Headed Stranger,
or his latest incarnation as a member of Wilco,
Cline is a truly versatile and virtuosic avant guitarist par excellence.
Wally Shoup
has been around the block a few times himself. Over the course of a career
spanning three decades, Shoup has been involved with Project W,
has collaborated on many recordings and performances with Thurston
Moore, and has brushed up against many American and European improvisers,
largely documented on the Leo label. Chris
Corsano is on a sharp upward trajectory as of late, pummeling
flesh and bone with his blitzkrieg drumming and splashes of color alongside
saxophonist Paul Flaherty and in Cold Bleak Heat. Corsano
has also been performing with the A-team of the "New Weird America", including
Matt Valentine (Tower Recordings, MV + EE), Sunburned
Hand of the Man and Six
Organs of ittance (most recently appearing on Six Organ's latest
Drag City opus School of the Flower). Taken together,
the three form a unit of seriously subliminal beauty, displaying a phenomenal
degree of interplay that alternates between pummeling mayhem and subtle
sonic ages.
Out of the gate, Cline's guitar bubbles and broods, Shoup's gritty sax
coughs forth both whiskey-drenched blues and supersonic skree, while Corsano
turns energy into light with his death-defying drumming. Onwards into
the affair, a more gentle trio surfaces to display effects-laden guitar
yawns, warm sax purrs and nuanced drum kit explorations of bowed cymbals
and quiet patterings. Cline, Corsano and Shoup play off each other like
they have been performing together for years, their spontaneous flights
spawning fully formed compositions that unfurl from the atmosphere like
sudden spring thunderstorms.
As indicated by the title, Immolation/Immersion is compellingly
dynamic, capturing a full range of destructive force and quiet submersion.
Jaw-dropping and essential. -Strange Attractors