Icepick is the super-power trio of some of the busiest musicians on this planet – American, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Nate Wooley, Norwegian, Austin-based bass player Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and American, Upstate New York-based drummer Chris Corsano. Hellraiser is already the third album of this trio and was recorded live in February 2018, on the occasion of a gathering supporting the Option series at Experimental Sound Studios (ESS) in Chicago. Originally, this performance was slated for another Wooley-led group, and only last-minute travel issues led to the rare occasion where all three members of Icepick happened to be free for the date in Chicago. The ESS continues to host and facilitate online Quarantine Concert Series even in this coronavirus lockdown era, reminding all of us what we used to celebrate not so long ago.
The infrequent meetings of this trio do not affect the immediate flow of the music and the profound, telepathic interplay of Wooley, Håker Flaten & Corsano, all are masters of free-improvised format. The three collective, improvised pieces highlight their great experience and focus on structuring loose compositions through improvisation techniques, on account of powerful, wild eruptions but, still, with the fiery excitement of such a performance.
Håker Flaten & Corsano build mighty yet quite flexible rhythmic patterns on the opening piece «El-Bound», fueling the soaring flights and deep whispers of Wooley. Wooley sketches «Chicago Deader» as a moving ballad while Håker Flaten & Corsano color his singing melody with disturbing, restless colors, slowly building a massive pulse. The last and longest piece, the 17-minutes «Blueline» cements the reserved atmosphere of this performance.
The fractured rhythmic patterns of Håker Flaten & Corsano are the basis for Wooley’s intense employment of an array of extended breathing techniques, but soon enough all three musicians calibrate perfectly on their own dance. First in wild moves but later in more suggestive, poetic moves, repeating, again and again, the simple, melodic theme, all the way until the ecstatic coda, without raising hell, but still in perfect shape.
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NATE WOOLEY - Trumpet
INGEBRIGT HÅKER FLATEN - Bass
CHRIS CORSANO - Drums
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Released 2020; Astral Spirits
Nate Wooley is one of the rising stars of the American experimental scene, a trumpet virtuoso whose musical explorations have taken him through ecstatic jazz, free improvisation, drone composition, and noise into a place very much his own, characterised by intense dynamics, an acute awareness of space, and a complex and organic sense of structure. Recent collaborators include John Zorn, Chris Corsano, Akron/Family, Peter Evans, Wolf Eyes, Joe Morris, and Evan Parker.
“A word or two is in order about Wooley’s approach to his instrument. While the spatial innovations of Bill Dixon and Wadada Leo Smith are certainly referenced, the humor of Lester Bowie is also in evidence, and I even hear the chronologically disparate but equally luscious tones of Tony Friscella and Arve Henrikson on occasion. An extraordinary listen.” - Marc Medwin, Dusted Magazine
Chris Corsano (b. 1975, USA) is a New York-based drummer who has been active at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late 1990's. He's been the rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary purveyors of "jazz" (Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, Mette Rasmussen, Zoh Amba) and "rock" (Sir Richard Bishop, Bill Orcutt, Jim O'Rourke), as well as artists beyond categorization (Björk for her Volta album and world tour, Michael Flower, Okkyung Lee).
Corsano began a long-standing, high-energy musical partnership with saxophonist Paul Flaherty in 1998. Their style, which they occasionally refer to with (semi-)tongue-in-cheek humor as "The Hated Music", combines modern free-jazz's ecstatic collectivism with the urgency and intensity of hardcore punk. A move from western Massachusetts to the UK in 2005 led Corsano to develop his solo music -- a dynamic, spontaneously-composed orchestra-of-one utilizing extended techniques for drum set, non-percussive instruments of his own creation (e.g. bowed violin strings stretched across drum heads), circular breathing on modified reed instruments, and stockpiles of resonant metals. He spent 2007-08 as the drummer on Björk's Volta world tour, all the while weaving in shows and recordings on his days off with the likes of Evan Parker, Michael Flower, and Jandek. He moved back to the U.S. in 2009 and continued touring in an ultrawide array of ever-evolving collaborations. In 2017 he won the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. A renowned solo performer in his own right, Corsano has a new solo record, The Key (Became The Important Thing [and Then Just Faded Away] out on the Drag City label.
His dedication to collective improvisation has led to Corsano to join forces with many kindred spirits and his appearance on over 180 records and thousands of live performances. He's worked with, among others: Paul Dunmall (released by the label: ESP-Disk), Joe McPhee (Roaratorio), Okkyung Lee (Open Mouth), Bill Orcutt (Palilalia), Mette Rasmussen (Hot Cars Warp Records & Clean Feed), John Edwards (OTOroku & Dancing Wayang), Sylvie Courvoisier (Relative Pitch), Nate Wooley (No Business & Astral Spirits), Jim O'Rourke & Akira Sakata (Drag City & Polystar), Merzbow (Family Vineyard), Jessica Rylan (Load Records), Rodrigo Amado (Trost), Nels Cline (Strange Attractors), Heather Leigh (Volcanic Tongue), Ghédalia Tazartès (Ultra Eczema), Ken Vandermark (Audiographic), and Sunburned Hand Of Man (Manhand).
https://chriscorsano.bandcamp.com/music
