Paul Corley Disquiet

Disquiet is the debut album of American composer, sound recordist and engineer Paul Corley.

Disquiet is music that never settles. Music that makes the listener fiercely attentive to the present, to the very idea of listening. It takes some doing, and some patience, to produce an atmosphere so unearthly and yet so radiant, to organise fragmented - sometimes found - sounds into such sparse, sustained and spiritual coherence. As we listen to Corley listening to himself listen and seek a fixed genre point for this music, we perhaps rub together glitch, drone, sound art, post rock and alt-classical, and an as yet unspecified genre called ‘hazard a guess’, and then employ our own discretion.

Although Disquiet is Paul Corley’s first album on Bedroom Community, he is no stranger to the label. Having collaborated extensively with the Bedroom Community collective since 2007, the label is proud to add Corley to the intimate roster that now comprises of seven highly original artists. Disquiet is a welcome addition to the catalogue; at the same time an album of delicate, primal (prepared) piano variations, a sequence of exquisitely reflective slow songs, and a metaphysical field recording where resonances are set off by real and imaginary geographical features. The album seems to be the recording of a dream, not necessarily Corley’s own, as if he slipped into the mind of someone asleep and calmly set up his equipment. Disquiet suggests a walk through an icy wasteland under a darkening sky, with unspecified creatures lurking at the edge of vision, a drifting walk that ends in the shadows of a vaguely familiar deserted city. Some might discern in the distance the footsteps of Morton Feldman who has once passed nearby or is about to, or might spot some wires discarded by Chris Watson and a question or two written into the sand by Anton Webern.

When asked whether this is music representing something coming into being - a growing in confidence or something dissolving into deep, equivocal quiet beyond which there is only space - the answer is simple, yet complex. “Both at the same time,” Corley replies - somewhere between hazarding a guess, and knowing for sure.

1. She Is In The Ground
2. Narrow
3. Dialogue and Passing Judgement
4. Disquiet