about the cd

Corey Fuller is one half of the duo Illuha on 12k, and Break is his first solo recording for the label. A crashing wave, the breaking dawn, an impact, the crushing of emotional spirit, the breaking of a storm—these are all relevant ideas behind his choice of title for this highly emotional album. Fuller addresses the universality of human struggle without delving into specifics of his own personal waves. The idea that we as humans share many of the same difficulties is both a launching point and a message he wishes to convey with Break—the catharsis.

While Illuha’s music is known for its attention to small sounds and light textures, Break, though equally fragile, finds Fuller working with much heavier elements. Still highly melodic, the work pulls and churns between harmony and tension, weight and air—the crash of a wave, the pull of the undertow. The album is intensely focused on melody and harmony, with progressions more carefully composed than the serendipitous found sound of his work with Illuha.

The piano is often at the center of these songs, an instrument (his own) that has become very much an extension of his body. His voice also plays an important role, sometimes lyrically ethereal and sometimes just a breath, signifying the ever-fragile thread of life. Beautifully recorded in his Tokyo studio, the sounds are captured with all of their inherent physical flaws. As Fuller himself describes the piano, it is “recorded in a way that you can hear the bones, like an open ribcage, moving, contorting…” Everything on Break is there for a reason—not just the sound and soul of the piano, but the electronic elements as well: rattling bass tones and dramatic, emotional waves of synthesizer rising and dissolving.

If a single word can be used to describe Break, it is physical. From the instruments and techniques used to produce the album to its themes of human vulnerability, Break is an emotional riptide where violence and rest struggle to be the final voice.