Paul Corley

While the word "disquiet" may suggest something overtly sinister, Ben Frost collaborator Corley's work on this album manages to balance beauty and the foreboding extremely well. Texturally very rich, Corley and his collaborators use both electronics and unconventional instrumental techniques (i.e., strumming and scraping inside of the piano) to generate layers of unique and organic atmospherics. This sense of discovery within the instrumental realm, combined with copious close mic-ing, provides detail and intimacy often absent from this style of music, and Disquiet is all the better for it. Often starting from a delicate, piano-based core reminiscent of Harold Budd or Erdem Helvacioglu's recent prepared piano disc on Innova, as each of the four longish pieces unfold sonic shadows emerge and shift, and distant creaks and buzz crawl closer, creating a sense of malaise, but seldom fully encroaching upon the warmth being conveyed in the foreground. Eerily sumptuous, Disquiet is a very strong and listenable debut containing both obvious surface musicality and a wealth of microcosmic activity lurking in the periphery.