Chris Corsano is a living, breathing titan of drumkit explosiveness. It is said that he hangs his hat (if a hat he chooses to wear) in Chicago, IL, but in a spiritual sense, Corsano is everywhere. Tashi Dorji is a contemporary cyclone of abstract versatility and fervor playing guitars electric and acoustic. Born in Bhutan, he has long called Asheville, NC, home, but like Corsano, the essence of the man cannot be harnessed; it spills out all over hill and dale.
Putting these rich cats together in a room with their instruments is a recipe for interactive fireworks, a display that reinforces the pair as collaborators of the highest rank. Live at Ritual Botanica provides recorded evidence of the duo’s high-energy brilliance. It’s out now on vinyl and digital via Feeding Tube Records.
The drum prowess of Chris Corsano has perhaps been most widely disseminated through his duo sets, studio and live, with guitarist Bill Orcutt (expanded to a trio for one mind-flaying LP with ecstatic saxophonist Zoh Amba, The Flower School). Corsano is, in fact, a dogged collaborator, with a massive discography built upon the vast range of his improvisational abilities.
A few solo records stand out in his body of work, but Corsano really thrives through dialogue. There are numerous conversational constellations inside or on the borders of free jazz, in particular a stunning string of duos with saxophonist Paul Flaherty that form one sweet peak in a mountainous expanse of exploratory magnificence.
Interwoven into this bountiful scenario is a no less striking splatter-gush of free rock clamor in connection with a spate of guitarists, including Orcutt, Thurston Moore, and Bill Nace. Jim O’Rourke, Sir Rick Bishop, Glenn Jones, and Nels Cline, amongst others, with Tashi Dorji joining this list through a single night in 2023, followed by a small tour of live performances, four in total, that kicked off with the set in Asheville, documented on Live at Ritual Botanica.
The trajectory of Dorji’s recorded output is no less captivating. There are more solo recordings in the mix along with a few collaborators in common with Corsano, notable amongst them records with Orcutt, one a duo banger and another a trio with saxophonist-trumpeter Joe McPhee.
Live at Ritual Botanica is a glorious, slow-growing wave of thundering pummel, cascades of clang, rippling roars, intermingled angularities, tangles of thwack-squeal, and tandem eruptions of pure elation, a record that hydroplanes on the slick-ass highway between out jazz at its spikiest and rock at its most roving and restless.
Disinclined to settle into a pocket of predictability, Corsano and Dorji make a few inroads into uncharted territories. The heightened intensities in “Finite Volumes” and the short closer “Cross” justify the purchase price, but the whole of Live at Ritual Botanica is as maximal as duo exchange gets. Prepare to be swept up.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
