Album review: Chris Corsano – The Key

July 2, 2024

The Key’s overall sound tends toward a hard, rocking subgenre of post-punk, but in Chris Corsano’s hands, anything is possible and these genres become mutable and malleable.

Chris Corsano spoils us. It seems that barely a month goes by without a new release showcasing the New York-based drummer’s extensive talents. The list of people he has worked with is staggering and includes Six Organs of Admittance, Bill Orcutt, Sir Richard Bishop, Björk, Jandek, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. You don’t get that kind of work without being the very best at what you do. But as well as being a serious contender for the title of best drummer in the world, Corsano is also a highly gifted composer and improviser, and some of his most impressive music can be found on the six solo albums he has released since 2006. The young cricketer. The key (became the most important thing (and then just disappeared)) is a solo record in every respect: Corsano plays all the instruments and is responsible for the mixing and cover art of the record.

Opener, I have no missionshas a sound and thrust, an urgent, swelling tempo punctuated by moments of tight guitar that push the post-punk aesthetic towards experimentalism. Corsano, the drummer, is rightly praised, but Corsano, the guitarist, is more of an unknown quantity, and on I have no missionshe shows himself to be very accomplished, sensitive and economical. Here, the overdubbing of guitar and percussion creates a kind of approximation of a rock band, like something a hyper-intelligent alien would produce if given the right ingredients. A similar effect is achieved with The comprehensive cleaninga pleasantly scratchy piece of DIY jazz punk.

The rest of the album focuses, not surprisingly, on Corsano’s ultra-tight and highly distinctive drumming. He has developed a “string drum” – a silicon string stretched across a snare – which he plays alongside his regular drum kit, allowing him to create pieces with astonishing levels of tone and timbre. Divide into four parts is an exercise in density and sonic claustrophobia, with Corsano’s beats condensing into static noise and then expanding into heavy, metallic chains. Little experience plays with ideas of smallness and minimalism, forgoing natural time and rhythm to create something that sounds both spontaneous and carefully considered (though the mathematics used for these measurements is unknown).

The strange timing of Little experience feed into the next title, Unlike an empty boxthat begins with trepidation but soon drags and takes on a free-form nervousness that is more akin to experimental jazz than rock or post-punk. He has the unique ability to make a solo drum improvisation sound like something created by an entire collective of musicians, and the added resonance that the string drum creates only underlines this. The final track, Everything I tried to understand was not understandable at allshows Corsano at his most innovative, unorthodox. Not many drummers could make their instrument sound like a swarm of insects ravaging a Japanese taiko drum festival, but he does that and more, piling one rhythmic embellishment on top of another and laying the whole thing over a buzzing, resonant base.

The overall sound of The Key tends towards a hard rocking subspecies of post-punk, but in Corsano’s hands anything is possible and these genres become mutable and malleable. This is an album of free-wheeling creative enthusiasm, indebted to the worlds of free improvisation and jazz. No moment of it is less than captivating and often astonishing.