An arresting set of group improvisations from four, eminent musicians, Four Corners Make A Circle is the outcome of a quartet getting together to jam out tortuous tunes on the fly. Except that it wasn’t quite that.
Recorded during the height of the pandemic in 2020, Four Corners was made the way most records had to be made during that time: remotely. Guitarist Roberto Zorzi, multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp, drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Jason Hoopes taped their parts from Italy, NYC, Berkeley, CA and down the road in Oakland, CA, respectively. I have to point that out because you wouldn’t necessarily know it by listening to this; it’s often blissfully chaotic but it’s chaos in concert.
Four Corners is a sort of follow up to Facanapa & Umarells and the World Wide Crash, a project that also involved Zorzi and Amendola, with Michael Manring on bass. But with Jason Hoopes and especially renowned avanteer Elliott Sharp now on board, this promises to go even further into the ether, and it’s a promise delivered.
All of these musicians are capable of anything at any moment and with this unpredictable mixture of textures, technology and prowess, this is music where every second is stimulating.
With Sharp’s slide work, “FolkSong” is almost a blues song, but more like free blues as everyone is in constant forward motion, orbiting around a single-chord motif. “Lockdown Blues” is not a blues but has one of the more definable riffs of the whole album. A metallic sheen reminiscent of Richard Pinhas, the song is marked by Amendola’s toms and Sharp’s off-the-hook delivery.
“Dance 16” floats rather than grooves and Sharp can be heard playing what I’m fairly sure are his electronically altered woodwinds instruments as Zorzi broadly sketches out a chord pattern and the rhythm section goes off unhinged. Zorzi and Hoopes construct complementing harmonies to launch “Tsinkaro” and it glides along in a dream-like state until Sharp restarts the song with more slide guitar but with his alien electronic effects piled on, it’s no less trippy.
“Mike Ratledge” almost certainly refers to the Soft Machine founder/keyboardist but goes further out than any Softs music he’s been associated with. Electronic/ambient textures get broken up by Hoopes’ and Amendola’s permeating groove and splotches of circuit-bent accents with psychedelic-drenched guitars. Roberto Zorzi’s rich, majestic tonalities does recall the guitar of the subject of “Sonny’s Time Now (for Sonny Sharrock)” followed by some Sonny-like shredding.
Four Corners Make A Circle is now out through Elliott Sharp’s zOaR Records. Grab it here.
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