Jailbreak is the duo of pedal steel/vocalist Heather Leigh and drummer Chris Corsano. The name foregrounds the kind of outlaw violence with which the two reformulate rock/roll instants by bringing free jazz fire power to amp-humping sex beats. Their musical alliance goes all the way back to the legendary Brattleboro Free Folk Fest, the birthplace of the ‘New Weird America’, where Corsano and his long-term saxophone partner Paul Flaherty joined Leigh and Christina Carter for a quartet show that took the roof off the building and the skin off their fingers. Since then Corsano and Leigh have worked together as part of Taurpis Tula and as members of Thurston Moore’s Dream/Aktion Unit. Jailbreak play improvised music that dispenses with traditional notions of call and response or dialogue in favour of a profound simultaneity that would birth instant forms from the application of high energy strategies. Leigh’s steel mainlines sanctified slide guitar sources and deforms them with overdriven electricity, playing a form of future-blues exploded by super-charged currents. Corsano detonates time, literally blows it to pieces, in favour of a profound polyrhythmic feel that would confuse past and future. Yet the whole thing rocks like it hasn’t a braincell to spare, re-connecting avant garde tactics and ass-whooping rama-lama with alla the revolutionary fanfare of the most radical counter-cultural two-chord punk. Their debut LP is called The Rocker. It’s all you need to know.  “For those of you who've been worried that the Free Power Noize scene has become a little too tame, (and seriously who isn't somewhat concerned about that), a new screamin' creamin' duo -- Jailbreak --explodes to the rescue. The world's wildest free drummer (Chris Corsano: Cold Bleak Heat , duos with Mick Flower, Bill Nace etc.) and the world's wildest free steal pedal guitarist, (Heather Leigh:, Dream Aktion Unit, Jandek, etc.), pits two of the landscapes most intense pyromaniacs against each other in -- "The Rocker" -- a blast-furnace of blisteringly joyous witch-howling assaults on the essence of whips and chains and repressive injustice gone legal.  Both of these magisterial musicians are capable of extreme dynamics and subtleties, but those concepts don't get in the way of this monster-truck of a record. And why should they when drums and guitar can slash and burn in a riotous electric smash fest like this crazed merry madcap of an album.  Over the top ... Way! As the full frontal music rips through my naked and defenceless eardrums, images emerge of an old and demented grandmother, strapped into her rocking chair by disciples in heat. (ooooohhhhh yyyeeeaaahhhh!!!)  The more she violently rocks and chants with insane exhilaration, the more the treacherously imprisoned souls of Hell claw at their walls of liquid fire, desperately trying to free themselves from chains of Human and Sub-human limitations.  It sounds like 100 pall-bearin' viciously possessed drummers lifting 100 gone-bonkers zombie lovin' guitarists into another realm of escape, one that reality hasn't presented as a release, until now. The 1st time Heather & Chris played together, (a first meeting improve 4tet performance -- Babes on the Loose), I watched in disturbed horror as Heather crashed her steel pedal to the stage and sliced her hand while trying to play upside down. Then she passed out.  Corsano rushed to her aid, but had to stop and bandage his own bloodied digits, as rivers of crimson soaked the frightened platform.  (They obviously survived).  This recording picks up where that chaos and bedlam left off, and if possible, lifts the ante higher, into a maelstrom of American psychotic pandemonium gone-a-hunting in Scotland. A catch-and-release band for sure that attacks the jailers and frees the innocents ... just before the death penalty can be brutally administered. I liked it.” – Paul Flaherty. Highly recommended!

Brand new album from the world-beating free music duo of Heather Leigh on pedal steel and vocals and Chris Corsano on drums, following on in style from their Family Vineyard LP. Once more recorded and mixed by Andreas Jonsson the sound is as dazzling as their debut, with three tracks that move from ferocious post-Sharrock power blues through new zones of smoky, spectral tone. The opener comes straight out of The Rocker, with Heather’s bad motor scooter guitar burning asphalt while Corsano plays in four directions at a time, ducking air raid warnings with an amphetamine dexterity. Second track, “White Spider” is a whole new bomb, with the duo navigating a kind of psychedelic giallo atmosphere with Corsano making like an orchestra of Max Roachs while Heather plays spectral strings and floating tones that are straight out of the Nicolai/Morricone songbook. The closing “Freezing Shark” might be the most radical recording they’ve nailed to the floor, with an unaccompanied vocal from Heather driven straight through the wall by Corsano before the guitar explodes like a heavy metal Masayuki Takayanagi playing future blues. This is such a great, invigorating shot from the source and it confirms a whole buncha things that are important in underground music: energy, passion, actual playing, speed-of-thought improvisation. Who else comes close? Hand-numbered edition of 297 copies. Highest possible recommendation!

Raging free jazz duo blat from saxophonist Paul Dunmall (here doubling on border pipes) and drummer Chris Corsano, marking Corsano’s first –fated! - appearance on ESP Disk. Following in the tradition of ESP’s first classic free jazz run, Identical Sunsets is an ass-blasting high energy side. The title track is a particular monster, with Dunmall’s ululating border pipes conjuring the ghost of Albert Ayler’s bagpipes with psychedelic overtones and raw folk passion. Corsano is, of course, amazing. One of the first releases from the revived ESP Disk that feels worthy of the label. Highly recommended. 

Excellent, professionally filmed DVD documenting the live Jandek set from Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan, New York, September 6th, 2005 with Sterling Smith on keyboard and vocals joined by Loren Mazzacane Connors on guitar, Chris Corsano on drums and Matt Heyner on bass. There's a beautiful psych/dirge feel to the sound, with keyboards that have a glissy-devotional Canterbury air and Loren Mazzacane's guitar providing punctuating heavy, psych chords and serpentine licks that sound a little like his fuzz work circa Haunted House. In fact the combination of the two often leaves the album sounding like some kind of bizarre, personally extended re-think of the Arzachel album recorded by Steve Hillage and Egg in 1969, making it one of the most unlikely sounding Jandek albums to date. The rhythm section of Heyner and Corsano work slow, lumbering pockets of time that are beautifully hypnotic and Sterling's vocals are hazy and narcotic, a little softer than recent live recordings but occasionally shifting gears into that slightly contorted, mocking phrase style that defined Newcastle Sunday. The whole set is one single piece in seven movements entitled "Afternoon Of Insensitivity". Highly recommended and yet another fucking twist in a saga that keeps on turning.

DVD edition featuring both sets from this trio show with Sterling Smith on guitar and vocals, Chris Corsano on drums and Matt Heyner on bass, live at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, New York, September 7th, 2005. The sound is closer to the 'classic' Neilson/Youngs live blats but with a more straightahead garage/punk feel, with Sterling playing some of his oddest electric guitar downs while Heyner moves from groaning electric bass monoliths across the first set to quiet, semi-audible acoustic bass on the second. The second set is consequently the weirdest, with the extra space generated by Heyner fully inhabited by very minimal guitar work from Sterling and some oddly dramatised lyrical set-ups. Corsano plays it pretty straight for the bulk, riding behind Sterling's guitar like a steamroller, and at points the vocal delivery combines with the overall bounce of the rhythm section to birth something that seems to owe more to The Minutemen than any sort of avant blues tradition. The songs are great, moving from devastating emotionally wrought confessionals through to funny situational set pieces and Sterling really stretches out on vocals and is obviously enjoying the performance.

Edition of 400 copies live album from Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder, joined by Ron Schneidermann (Sunburned et al), Doc Dunn and Chris Corsano. Live Road focuses on the more extended Environments style of MV & EE and makes for one of their most psychedelic and otherworldly sides, pitched somewhere between ’72 Dead, Alan Silva’s Skillfulness LP, the early lunar COM style and some of the wilder of the recent Heroine sets. The version of “Mine All Troubled Blues” that opens the set features some of Valentine’s most wayward guitar picking, a beautiful demonstration of how far-reaching his re-think of the possibilities of country-blues guitar has become. Takayanagi couldn’t have phrased it better. Then there are two versions of “Environments” spliced together to generate a hallucinatory headspace that combines plumes of outside strings with peacock drones and visions of melting steel. The B side sees Corsano piloting the group into a tear-it-up power stomp through “Tea Devil” before they dissolve back into another “Environments”. One of the MV and EE’s furthest orbits of form, beautifully realized by Blackest Rainbow with wraparound jackets featuring cover art by Jeremy Earl of Woods. Highly recommended.

New limited edition self-released album from the greatest drummer on the planet, Chris Corsano. Chris Corsano Band is Corsano’s solo visioning of a free rock group, playing drums, bass and guitar all himself and overdubbing to create a now sound take on the rock/roll instants of Vampire Belt. His playing here is closest to his work with Rangda and as if to cement the umbilical he throws in a raging cover version of Sun City Girls’ classic “Esoterica Of Abyssynia” from Torch Of The Mystics. Recorded over the space of three years in the USA and Scotland, High And Dry sees Corsano channeling the kind of epic out of focus string work of Jutok Kaneko and Rudolph Grey while levitating the whole deal into space with some of his most fucked-up drum sounds. The guest appearance from The Wizard on bongos, still ‘hot’ from Frank Lowe’s epic Black Beings ESP-Disk date, is just too much gravy. Handmade covers, every one unique. Highly recommended.

Massive double disc set that pairs legendary Japanese free jazz saxophonist Akira Sakata with Jim O’Rourke on guitar, harmonica and electronics alongside the duo of drummer Chris Corsano and bassist Darin Gray. Akira Sakata has long been one of the key players on the Japanese free jazz underground, playing as a part of Yamashita Yosuke’s trio and forging alliances with players like Peter Brotzmann and Sonny Sharrock, who he played with as part of Last Exit. And That’s The Story Of Jazz... gathers a bunch of recordings from the group’s 2008 Japanese tour and it’s an absolute revelation. Sakata’s style bridges classic post-Fire Music Japanese freedoms with a wild mystic/psychedelic edge and the combined backgrounds of his three collaborators push the whole deal into some kind of post-improvised underground psych zone. Sure, there are raging multi-limbed blow-outs that worship at the altar of Church Number 9 where you can barely make out who is doing what but there’s a whole deal more, picked guitar and droning strings over weird acid folk meditations that cross Holy Mountain-era Don Cherry with Mark Fry and Yatha Sidhra, the kind of raggedy folk/punk euphoria more associated with Finnish tribes like Paivansade and Rauhan Orkesteri, rich Om-ing Coltrane-isms, spiky No Wave blats that reinvent Rudolph Grey and Von Lmo’s vision of free heavy metal... this record throws a spanner in any conception of what a collaboration with a first generation Japanese free saxophonist and three avant punks might sound like. And this is the sound. Highly recommended.

Staggering document of the entire April Flower tour that took place in April 2011 and saw Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder joined by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower-Corsano Duo) on electric bass. This trio might be the single greatest ‘small group’ to grace MV’s back catalogue. Something about the way Flower is able to navigate with the vaguest and most subtly ‘implied’ directions seems to free the group sound to float all the way out there, resulting in some of their most effortlessly psychedelic and unequivocally beautiful visionings of deep rural psych. The set comes with 8 separate CD-Rs, all with their own Heroine style sleeve/title, housed in a tall oversize handmade art book with beautifully printed artwork, a VIP certificate and a thick booklet with colour covers that features a complete rundown of the shows, snaps and liners from Coot Moon and MV himself. It might just be the most gloriously crafted artefact to come out of the Child Of Microtones stable, a label that has long set the standard for tactile home-burned presentation. The shows come from Feeding Tube in Northampton 4/4/11, Saratoga Arts Centre, Saratoga Springs 4/5/11, The Church, Boston 4/6/11 (where the group are joined on drums by Chris Corsano for an amazing heavy psych set), State University Of New York 4/7/11, Death By Audio, Brooklyn 4/8/11 (where they’re joined by Jeremy Earl of Woods), Brickbat Books, Philadelphia 4/9/11 (a stunning set with guest spots from Willie Lane and Harmonica Dan), Wilkes-Barre, PA 4/10/11 and Mystery Train 4/11/11. The whole set is massively varied, with odd acoustic re-thinks of primo meat up against endlessly extended soft-as-snow renderings of haunted blues and full-blown free improvised navigations of the furthest environments. If I hadda pick a highlight it may well be the astounding Brickbat Books set that just sounds so great and has the group playing with at an all-time high of confidence and euphoria but really the whole set is a stone and one of the most necessary releases of the year. Edition of only 99 copies, so make your move. Can’t recommend this enough! To further prime you for the jams, our resident COMmentator, Blues Scholar Andrew Ross, gives us a close-up on one of the major discs:

Yorkshire Puddin’ – MV & EE with Mick Flower

“Picking one of my highlight shows from the box set, I opted for the opening night where the core trio played the Feeding Tube Records shop.  For whatever reason, the Feeding Tube venue always seems to conjure up something special when MV & EE play (check out previous Heroines like “Muy Alto” and “Toasted Cookie”) with a real creative edge and great quality sonics. The performance here on the April Flower tour is no exception with a real high-end folk art performance that is totally killer. The sonic mix on the recording itself is up there with the best, with the vocals really clear in the mix and the bass sounds so organic, almost acoustic at times. If that wasn’t enough there are a few live rarities/new tracks thrown in for good measure.
The set opens with “Drone Trailer” and keeps with the transcendental arrangement of late but with the dual vocals of MV & EE sounding particularly enchanting. There’s some delightful interplay between MV’s melodic solo expressions mixed with Erika’s pedal steel during the main instrumental break.  Next up is the set’s mind-blowing highlight, which is a 30 minute passage which runs “Hammer”, “Space Blues”, “Crow Jane Environs” and finally into “Death Is Your Friend”. Starts with “Hammer”, which is a spectacular re-think of the song’s arrangement. Previous versions have had a West Coast/Crazy Horse style feel to them but this particular arrangement comes across like a folk/blues mammoth.  Sparse restrained clean guitar, almost acoustic at times, combined with Erika’s vocals (doused in echo with long drawn notes) which are simply heart-breaking.  Some lucid wah-wah infused soloing from MV which is continually pinned down by Mick’s organic bass seals the deal.  Hands down this is my favourite version of “Hammer” yet.  This segues into “Space Blues” (only previously included on Double Double Raw) which is a short instrumental passage with a real psychedelic edge.  Some great high-end bass work and almost jazz-like runs from Mick overlade with space FX on the slide sounding particularly great.  Next is “Crow Jane Environs” from Liberty Rose (COM34).  Only previously available on the duo performance from Blasted Wavelength this is a vastly superior version and this is its only inclusion in the sets in this run of shows.  With its traditional folk lyrics and an arrangement that displays MV’s admiration of British and Celtic folk this is a radical re-interpretation of the folk source but with a real dark/psychedelic undercurrent that none of the current ‘psych/acid folk’ imposters would be capable of creating.  Eerie vocals over finger-picked inverted and transformed chord structures – it’s simply stunning.  But the real star of the track is Mick Flower whose high-end melodic bass phrasing takes it to a new dimension, coming across like a cross between Bert Jansch’s “Jack Orion” and The Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe Eugene” – check out the psychedelic guitar jam that erupts around 4m30s.  It doesn’t get much better.  This segues into “Death Is My Friend” which is another live rarity.  Only previously available on the Deep Space Circuit and Double Double Raw sets although the arrangement here borrows more from the studio version on “Liberty Rose”, albeit with a more electric blues feel.  It features those “Freight Train” style vocals from Erika with a mid-song rap that is as seductive to rival Kim Gordon’s on “Kool Thing”.  This develops into a sublime electric blues jam with some great hypnotic blues licks from MV pinned by a repeating bassline from Mick Flower in the same style as he did to those arrangements of “Get Right Church” and “Canned Happiness” on the Steal Yr Slice tour.  For anyone that read the recent article in the Wire on Bill Orcutt, it really does feel like artists like Orcutt and MV are pioneering modern interpretations of country and folk blues whilst still paying their respect to the source – recognising “the fact that you’re not Robert Johnson”.
“Crash Palace Of Records” is another new track (only previously available on the All Good Habs set, although that was recorded after this tour and so this is the real live debut) with the arrangement staying pretty true to the studio version from this year’s stunning Country Stash – albeit a month prior to that album’s release.  “Environments” is sufficiently different from the versions with Mick Flower from the Steal Yr Slice tour to keep even the completists more than intrigued.  It still has that raga feel particularly with the addition of Mick’s japan banjo interwoven with MV’s traditional banjo and some great space FX from Erika on the lap steel.  However, towards the end it breaks into a newer stretched passage which has a real heavy underground Tokyo psych feel to it coming across somewhere between live Hendrix circa 1970 and Takashi Mizutani.  In fact, anyone that enjoyed some of the heavier moments from Herbcraft’s Ashram To The Stars with those industrial/mechanical sounding feedback-drenched guitars should check this out.  This segues into the set closer, the road anthem of “Feelin’ Fine” which has a particularly sweet frazzled tone on the guitar on this one.
Overall, this set is totally killer (but it’s that middle passage that will keep you coming back) and has to rank up there with some of my personal favourites like Toasted Clam, Muy Alto, Double Double Raw, Wobbly Hall and even I Left My Wallet In The Trossachs.  If that wasn’t enough there are another 7 sets in the box set such as the mind-blower from Brickbat Books featuring Willie Lane.  It’s highly recommended!” – Andrew Ross.

Cool archival release that bundles a bunch of peak-period jams from Sunburned Hand Of The Man, al recorded across 2006. Features a bunch of radically expanded line-ups, with the core group joined by Chris Corsano, Mick Flower, Bridget Hayden and Keith Wood. Weird, detourned, almost Magic Band scale jams go up against vocal goofs, string drones, Ubu-styled garage and all-out Xhol worship. Cassettes come in screened cloth cases with insert. 

Much-anticipated multi-region three-camera DVD edition of both sets from Sterling Smith’s performance with Chris Corsano and Mick Flower at The Cube in Bristol on May 17^th 2006. Both sets have an odd compulsive energy which is almost at odds with the characters of the players involved. Corsano seems to be more ‘inside’ the tracks than really propelling them, knocking them sideways and subtly deforming them while Flower’s playing is more in the pulse style that he brings to his work with MV & EE. The second disc is more overtly ‘explosive’, with Flower switching to Japan banjo, and the resultant tangle of strings is beautifully complex. But despite both musicians’ innate iconoclasm, the show is really Sterling’s, commanding the group with a quiet confidence, wrapping his tongue around the lyrics and getting into some cranking guitar breakdowns.

Deluxe vinyl edition of this classic solo album from Heather Leigh (Jailbreak/Scorces/Jandek et al) originally released in a tiny edition on cassette by Fag Tapes. Two fully-extended high metal masses for amplified pedal steel and vocals that blow all notions of form, fidelity and frilly fucking folk-picking fops to the kinda sweet metallic ribbons previously worn as crowns by Keiji Haino, Jojo Hiroshige and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks. Very different in tone and attack from the recent Jailbreak LP, Jailhouse Rock has a more amorphous sound, with muzzy smears of guitar caked in NZ-style fuzz and clouds of high string tone that conjure the miasmic electronics of Maurizio Bianchi. One of Heather’s most blasted sides with all-new nuts artwork by Heath Moreland. “Jailhouse Rock is in fact a wax reissue of a long OOP 2006 cassette classic on Michigan crud factory Fag Tapes. It was a fave of ours that year (and every year), so it feels extra celebratory to be able to offer up a freshly remastered (by Pete Swanson) LP edition of the album for global re-appreciation. Sprawling, long-form descents/ascents into mythic electric disorientation, powered by her trademark recipe of FX-soaked pedal steel and voice. Jailhouse feels loosely more aligned with a mid-aughts drone/noise aesthetic than the outsider dirt road Americana of her Devil If You Can Hear Me LP (also on NNF), but the distinction is a slight one. Side A swims in swooping sheets of vox and tempestuous wind tunnel dynamics before slowly dying away to wheezing disembodied harmonica. The B piece begins in a more overtly beautiful mode, a trinity of crystalline notes picked and stretched until they’re transformed into a rapturous sky of textural distortion. Sensual and vertigo-inducing in equal measure. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with brand new paint/collage artwork by Heath Moerland (of Sick Llama, Slither, Odd Clouds, etc). Edition of 400.” – NNF. Highly recommended!

Long-awaited official DVD release of this mind-blowing Jandek concert, easily the most powerful and emotionally high-wire live show I have ever experienced in the flesh. This was the second of two concerts that Jandek presented as part of Instal 2005 in Glasgow, the first being a trio guitar/bass/drums performance. This set was divided into two thematically linked movements, here dubbed "The Grassy Knoll" and "Tribal Ether". The first is a heart-rending duo performance featuring Sterling on vocals and harmonica and Loren Mazzacane Connors on electric guitar. It starts off with a weird spoken word section that conflates the environs of the Kennedy assassination with a dystopian sci-fi scenario and a statement of intellectual and moral individuality. Then it makes a sudden, gut-wrenching turn where Sterling breaks into song, with the most forlorn vocal melody you could possibly imagine, and moves into a section that seems to be based around the heart-attack and hospitalisation of a parent or family member. The unaccompanied vocal sections are almost unbearably poignant and the combination of Connors' spectral blues and Sterling's Dylan-esque harp ups the emotional ante to the kinda level that almost makes it hard to listen to. It's not something you are gonna be able to just stick on in the background; there's a weight to this recording that means you really have to be ready for it. I was reduced to tears when I saw this live. The second section comes off like a defiant/hysterical coda to the first, featuring Sterling on drums (!), Alan Licht on electric guitar and Heather Leigh (Scorces, Jailbreak et al) on pedal steel guitar (not lap steel!) and vocals: Licht plays rhythm, Leigh plays lead, just in case you can't figure it out for yourself or you think that only guys can rip like that. Sterling's drums put the tribal in the title while Licht and Leigh collide with each other in an overdriven No Wave style that is pure thunder and lightning. It's one of the wildest performances on any Jandek recording. I'm so tired at this point of reading about Jandek's art in terms of dysfunction - hearing how these two pieces work together is testament to his deliberate vision, his talents as a performer and his incredible artistry. You won't hear a more profoundly affecting record this year - or any. Jandek is one of the greatest artists of the modern era and I would rate this record as one of his greatest achievements, up there alongside all-time Top 10 albums like Fushitsusha's Double Live, Albert Ayler's 66 recordings, Dylan's Blood On The Tracks/John Wesley Harding/Basement Tapes, Skip Spence's Oar, 13th Floor Elevators Easter Everywhere, Fraction's Moonblood, Dead C Trapdoor Fucking Exit, Richard Youngs' Summer Wanderer... you name it. It's that good. And to experience the whole concert again via this superb professionally shot film is just so much gravy. So, if you buy one DVD this year... Highest possible recommendation.