[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfPTBGLkbzM?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=375]

From the liner notes of Forget All That and Just Wail, new music compiled by Ross Simonini for the 2013 music issue:

Chris Corsano, “Famously Short Arms”

He plays while holding a book, which he constantly uses to mute and whack and press on the drums, creating a whole cornucopia of timbres from a single snare drum. There’s also some stuff hanging from cymbals and a piece of wrapping paper taped to a tom-tom, and he plays all this junk so fluently. What sounds like a set of drums being musically thrown around the room is, visually, so relaxed, controlled, and—seemingly—composed. Corsano has drummed among the improvisational vanguard for the last few decades, so his rhythmic language comes out of improvisation, even if what he’s playing is prewritten. The drum solo is usually considered a bemoaned indulgence in any musical tradition, but Corsano, like Han Bennink before him, has constructed it as a stand-alone art form.