My first listen to these four extraordinary pieces by Chris Corsano, Bill Nace, and Steve Baczkowski was over a very rough ferry crossing from Cairnryan to Belfast. It's hard not to think of the ghosts of impossible crossings, victories, loses, harbors in such rough waters. Why would anyone venture out here? Finding something new or an overdue visit? Ending all of the wars? For me, for my first listen to Mystic Beings instantly cured all motion sickness. It was probably just the very welcome adrenalin shots from their performance, but all the crashing and pitching over the waves became a joy. I was braver from listening in. Sometimes they hovered like a three-headed beacon -- a soaring vision to follow out on the horizon. Sometimes they seemed pulled into action and attack. Detonations and radio calls. Sometimes the spines of their own instruments cried out on the power of their own cores, their bodies having been left elsewhere. They drifted apart like a search party, skies clouded over, a spreading landscape streaked with transparent layers over layers. Or they joined together in quiet and unsparing ceremony, the kind usually reserved passing back through the place by which you've entered. All the while there was no scratching or banging at hard enclosed corners. These three players created a world of open space and flexible membrane, where any violence would only come from an outside imposition. Each of the songs read like movements in a larger work. As an eavesdropper, I added my own abstract, personal story over the whole album. I could repopulate new stories over and over again over this framework. The arc is that strong, and the conversation is that good. And even if just overheard, Mystic Beings generously called me out to where I needed to be. The shallows and the shores are where the worst dangers can find us, and our best chance of survival is sometimes out in the rolling depths. Deafen out the sirens and stay onward in the deep waters. Thank you, Bill and Chris and Steve, for sharing this kind of wild captain's safety with us.' --Meg Baird, Cairnryan and San Francisco, Nov 2018
credits
released January 1, 2018
Steve Baczkowski--saxes
Chris Corsano---drums
Bill Nace---electric guitar
Cover art Jagger Lloyd
Mastered by Carl Saff
Recorded and mixed by Chris Corsano
Recorded November 2nd, 2016.
Originally released on vinyl LP in an Edition of 400 with covers screened by Alan Sherry
The intensity and power, the majesty, an ocean is beautiful and horrifying in concept, a representation of the power of nature to mystify and then swallow you whole, I walk straight into this ocean and it does what it will. Mighttheone
Decades of political activism are funneled into a fusion of traditional Southern African music, free jazz, and avant-garde composition. Bandcamp Album of the Day Apr 24, 2024
Former member of Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 unveils a rich, swinging new record that pulls from jazz and soul in its high-wattage songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 24, 2024
The energy contained within each of these tracks was just what I was looking for although I couldn’t possibly have known that until I found it! Exhilarating, exciting and enthralling! Jimmy Wunts