Bill Nace, Steve Baczkowski, Chris Corsano Stolen Car

Last year or thereabouts, Bill Nace (Body/Head) released a super limited LP (50 test pressings only!) with the wonderful saxophonist Steve Baczkowski on his own Open Mouth imprint and it was barely off the Golden Lab stereo for the rest of 2014. A bedazzling demonstration of whacked, yet stunningly controlled guitar feedback smashing up against a wall of droning, wailing, crying and screaming sax, which each worked as the other’s tonal parallel, it was without doubt one of the records of the year.
It was closely followed by further LPs with Baczkowski, including a record augmented by free drummer extraordinaire Chris Corsano, frequent Corsano collaborator, saxophonist Paul Flaherty and legendary Vermont-based freak-folk vocalist Dredd Foole, again on Nace’s Open Mouth label. A very different record for the augmentation, it was nevertheless arguably even better than the duo LP and careened into a near-wash of pulsating static energy with instruments coming to the fore and then dipping away back into the ecstatic cacophony.Now, ‘Stolen Car’, recorded in January 2013 and performed by Baczkowski, Corsano and Nace, and featuring Flaherty napkin art on the front and back covers, pushes the re-set button and does something completely different again. The sprawling title jam that covers the entirety of Side A scratches and crackles before exploding into a full-on roar of expressionism that stretches the formerly unseen boundaries of non-idiomatic improv, practically suggesting a dogmatism about the expression as it existed prior to this recording. Side B collects three shorter, similarly rabid pieces, which each elevate Baczkowski’s playing to new, mind-boggling levels as he proves his mettle against two of the most outstanding proponents of their respective instruments in the world today.
Absolutely unmissable and in a run of just 300 copies. No re-pressing, so once they’re gone, they’re gone.