Flower Corsano Duo: live @ Supersonic 2009

Chris Corsano and Mick Flower opened the festival with an ecstatic outpouring of juddering rhythm and frenetic, shimmering notes. Having heard and enjoyed both of the duo’s albums (latest reviewed here) this set confirmed my suspicion that I would enjoy it all the more live.

I have seen Chris Corsano play drums before: you could say he’s got the knack. That knack has a way of inducing some high times in free-drum aficionados and laymen alike. In some circles (i.e. the ones who have heard of him) it kind of goes without saying that to watch him play drums is a special experience. But why? What makes this hairless American who moved to Scotland such a paralysing force behind the kit?

First of all, if he wasn’t a drummer I can sincerely imagine him as a spy. He looks like the kind of dude who could apply his exceptional concentration and fluid, creative thinking in all manner of highly pressured environments. Sure, this wasn’t really a highly pressured environment, it was four thirty in the afternoon at a festival in Birmingham (that the mainstream media probably can’t quite make their minds up about, long may it last…), he could have gone out the back for a piss and a dig at the buffet and it’s likely people wouldn’t be certain it wasn’t planned.

But you can see the potential: I imagine that the depth and resolution of his focus would increase to meet the situation. Today he was playing with Metal Puppies, but tomorrow he could be kicking the shit out of a Communist Panda. If he were bashing some skins on the poopdeck of the Titanic you can bet that he wouldn’t give up playing just because he was at eighty-seven degrees to the cold blue (like those other quitters).

It didn’t look like he was stretching himself, he barely broke a sweat and didn’t appear to be pushing his boundaries, but those boundaries are pretty far flung, and Chris Corsano in second gear has a lot of torque to call upon. Even someone like me who is still unsure about the names of various components of a drumkit can see how integrated Corsano is with his kit. Cymbals are placed so that they overhang tom drums, allowing a two birds with one stone swipe. Rags are used for dampening, foreheads are used for Tabla-like pitch bending, grimaces and pouts complete the captivating spectacle, that is if you sidestep trying to describe what he does with the sticks…

Because the combination of Mick Flower’s amplified Shaahi Baaja with Corsano’s drumming follows a certain pattern and is instantly identifiable after the first listen, it would be tempting to call them out, or praise them for doing only one thing. But who doesn’t? And the people at Supersonic had attention spans, which was a wonderful crowd to be a part of. I could tell that I wasn’t the only one left feeling elated and strangely light at the close of the set.

At the time a clumsy analogy popped into my head, I imagined myself typing “It was like watching a juggler perform besides a snake charmer, only the snake charmer was a really tall man from Leeds who is an integral part of the Vibracathedral Orchestra and can also play good old boy rock guitar really well as on the Michael Flower Band CD that Three Lobed put out last year as part of their excellent subscription series…”

It trailed off just like that, but there was no time for boring myself because Mick Flower (who was by now a “hot air balloon conductor”) had started to whip things up a little. I have already taken my best shot at describing the sound of his Indian instrument on that review I linked y’all to back up top, so I won’t go there again, but all I can say is that it clearly flicks Corsano’s rhythmic switches as much as it instigates a steady unburdening in me, which is harnessed by those drums and reconfigured into a very beautiful feeling. One which certainly contributed to an evening in which I felt wide-open to fun, doom and the general atmosphere of enthusiasm that was pinging off the redbrick all around me.

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