Tashi Dorji, Chris Corsano

"Messrs. Corsano and Dorji are both familiar names in the Feeding Tube discography. Chris has played drums on eight FTR LPs (and recorded two other), and Tashi has played guitar on six (details upon request if you are lazy.) But this is the first time they have appeared on vinyl as a duo, and we are damn proud to have them. Over the past years Chris has recorded with a lot of the era's best guitarists -- Bill Nace, Ben Chasny, Thurston Moore, Nels Cline, David Vanzan, Bill Orcutt, Rick Bishop, Glenn Jones, Jim O'Rourke, Flo Stoffner, and onward. And Tashi has worked with some fine-ass drummers -- Thom Nguyên, Tyler Damon, Michael Zerang, Dylan Fujioka, Susie Ibarra, Marshall Trammell, etc. So perhaps this team-up was inevitable. They played their first live duo show at a one-off in 2023 and it went so well, they set up a four date tour for 2025. This set was recorded at the tour's inaugural date in Tashi's hometown, Asheville NC, at Ritual Botanica, a space run by Tashi's pals, Potion. And it is a corker.

Chris runs through a panorama of his playing styles. Sometimes he flashes polyrhythmic jazzoid explosions across every available drum head. At others he lays into a slightly off-kilter backbeat like some sort of prog rock lumberjack. Simultaneously, Tashi lays out lines of space-oid feedback, drives through angular chunk-riffs ala early John McLaughlin, or spirals into psych flairs worthy of Japan's sub-underground masters. Together, they make a powerful argument for the divine mastery of drum/guitar duos, a non-standard format first introduced (to me, anyway) on Randy Holden's Population II. Live at Ritual Botanica is a different animal than Holden's classic LP, but a stone by any other name, y'know?" - Byron Coley