★Corbett Vs. Dempsey

Reissue, originally released in 1985. Gentle, incisive solo music for violin and electronics by one of the unsung giants of free improvisation. Philipp Wachsmann emerged in the fertile mid '70s underground free music scene in London, playing with everyone from Simon Mayo to Barry Guy to Derek Bailey to Evan Parker, starting a band called Chamberpot, making albums for the collective artist-run label he managed: Bead Records. These LPs, 26 of them in total, were made in tiny batches and are now ra…

Two certifiable Sun Ra classics refreshed and renewed and rolled into the perfect package. First released on the French label BYG/Actuel in 1971, the companion volumes of The Solar-Myth Approach were essential in introducing Ra's monumental program to an international audience. As with many Arkestra records, the information on these gatefold packages was dubious at best. Here they appear with corrected lineups and dates, showing that the music actually stretches back to the early 1960s, but was …

For a performance at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in spring of 1966, percussionist Milford Graves invited pianist Don Pullen to play duets. The two musicians had worked together in a band fronted by saxophonist and clarinetist Giusseppi Logan, with whom they had recorded two LPs in 1965 for ESP-Disk'. Graves was already a daunting presence in free music. One step at a time, he was busy transforming the role of drumming in jazz, introducing a new way of dealing with unmetered time a…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio's Three Nails Left, originally released in 1975. One of the all-time great records of improvised music from Europe. Period. Blisteringly hot. Uncompromisingly inventive. Staggeringly beautiful. And insanely rare. Originally issued in the mid '70s on FMP, at its core Three Nails Left features the legendary Schlippenbach Trio -- British saxophonist Evan Parker, and German percussionist Paul Lovens joining the German pianist …

Never-before-issued music from three very different settings in upstate New York, all recorded in the period running up to Poughkeepsie multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's Nation Time (CVSD 054CD). From a year before that landmark LP, in the same hall at Vassar College, McPhee led a band with soulful vibraphonist Ernie Bostic and voluble rhythm section of Tyrone Crabb and Bruce Thompson, both of Nation Time fame, performing a John Coltrane-oriented set that included versions of Mongo Santamaria's…

2020 stock. 2017 release. Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Suns Of Arqa's Revenge Of The Mozabites, originally released on Rocksteady Records in 1980. One of the key ensembles in the history of what is now referred to as world music, Suns Of Arqa began in 1979 with Revenge Of The Mozabites, the brainchild of Michael Wadada. With a ground base of dub -- in both aesthetic and method -- made palpable by master dub rhythm section of Style Scott on drums and Lizard Logan on bass, and produced…

2020 stock. 2017 release. Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Suns Of Arqa's Revenge Of The Mozabites, originally released on Rocksteady Records in 1980. One of the key ensembles in the history of what is now referred to as world music, Suns Of Arqa began in 1979 with Revenge Of The Mozabites, the brainchild of Michael Wadada. With a ground base of dub -- in both aesthetic and method -- made palpable by master dub rhythm section of Style Scott on drums and Lizard Logan on bass, and produced…

2020 stock. 2014 release. One of the most celebrated folks in improvised music, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson made three ultra-limited edition vinyl LPs, each featuring a different dedication to a favorite musician from the past. Released in batches of 99, these records found Gustafsson playing compositions by Duke Ellington, Albert (and his brother Donald) Ayler, and the important post-bop baritone player Lars Gullin. Long out-of-print, these priceless slabs of free music have quickly bec…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Willem Breuker and Han Bennink's New Acoustic Swing Duo, originally released in 1967. Late in 1967, saxophonist Willem Breuker and drummer Han Bennink recorded the first LP for the new artist-run free improvised music label, ICP Records. New Acoustic Swing Duo was an instant classic, and remains one of the most enduring documents of Dutch improvised music ever recorded. With Breuker's omnidirectional reed work, which ranges from plaintive to excoriating, …

Despite having worked together in innumerable settings, including the longstanding Survival Unit III, with drummer Michael Zerang, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee have never released a CD of duets. In an extra intimate studio setting in upstate New York, where both players reside, No Time Left for Sadness demonstrates their incredible musical understanding. Recalling some of McPhee's landmark records with Marseilles musicians in terms of telepathy and trust, it's a…

One day in the studio, something ridiculously great happened. It was deep Chicago winter, cold as shit. Four musicians assembled for a round-robin set of improvisations -- duets, trios, a few quartets. Approached casually, the late morning bloomed into Largest Afternoon, 15 crackling encounters between guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonists Joe McPhee, and Ken Vandermark, and drummer Phil Sudderberg. No expectations -- open minds and creative intent. Lindsay, a brilliant singer and songwriter and …

An übertrio drawn from distinct parts of the creative music spectrum, The Underflow was recorded during a sizzling two-night stand in May 2019. In a series of duets and trios, guitarist David Grubbs, saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and trumpeter Rob Mazurek met headlong for the first time, converging not only their acoustic and electric instruments, but at times submerging themselves in a tangle of electronics, then emerging into shamanic bell-shaking chant or chest-rattling howl. Ranging from extr…

In 2018, Mats Gustafsson provided raw saxophonic material for the elusive Wendy Gondeln, who sometimes applied a scalpel, sometimes a pneumatic drill, to rework, remix, reimagine all the Swede's squeaks, pops, blats, and tones. In some places, Gondeln adds violent violin to thicken the roux, making Ornette's fiddling seem like Yehudi Menuhin. Uncommon bedfellows: disjunct techno and improvised music. But the Shitholes make it work brilliantly, even inviting minimal techno pioneer and co-founder …

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Dudu Pukwana, Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg's Yi Yole, originally released in 1979. Recorded at the ICP Jubileum, a festival in Uithoorn, Holland, in 1978, Yi Yole brings together the core of the Instant Composers Pool -- pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink -- with legendary South African alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana. Longtime member of the Blue Notes, Pukwana was a beloved figure in European free music after he left South Africa in the m…

Originally recorded and released in 1977, the Instant Composers Pool's Tetterettet is the first classic of the band's larger incarnations. Assembled out of elements recorded live in Uithoorn, Utrecht, and the band's home base of Amsterdam, with Misha Mengelberg using a cut-and-paste collage method akin to Teo Macero's work with Miles Davis, the record features an all-star lineup that added three leading lights of free music: bassist Alan Silva and saxophonists John Tchicai and Peter Brötzmann. I…

Since 2015, Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio has been the host of Option, a series of intimate concerts of improvised music. Featuring an uncommonly wide range of players representing virtually all haunts of free music, the series has fostered not only an important exchange of ideas in musical form, but it has also promoted literal conversation about the music, usually substituting a dialogue with the musician or musicians for the requisite second set. In 2018, the series was funded by a cons…

If you've missed out on bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, now's your chance to play some catch up ball. He's one of creative music's most eloquent exponents, having emerged from the fertile Swedish jazz scene around 2005. With his band Torbjörn Zetterberg Hot Five, he began a fruitful relationship with the thoroughly excellent Moserobie label, run by his frequent band mate, saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, and by the time he was making records like Skildrar Kvinnans Kamp and Och Den Stora Frågen, Corbet…

Hailing from the Germantown section of Philadelphia, well known as the site of the Sun Ra Arkestra communal homestead, Sounds of Liberation were at the forefront of '70s Black liberation music. After a series of gigs in elementary schools, prisons, and community centers, the band travelled along with their manager George Gilmore (father of Linc Gilmore of Breakwater fame) to NYC in 1973 for a recording session at Columbia University. This five-song session has never been heard until now. Had it …

Corbett Vs. Dempsey presents a reissue of Joe McPhee's Nation Time, originally issued in 1971. It's been nearly five decades since McPhee assembled a group of musicians to perform the weekend concerts that would become Nation Time, his second LP. It was December 1970; thirty-one-year-old McPhee was inspired by Amiri Baraka's poem It's Nation Time, and the students at Vassar College didn't know what hit them. "What time is it?", shouted McPhee. "Come on, you can do better than that. What time is …

Corbett vs. Dempsey presents a reissue of Misha Mengelberg's Groupcomposing, recorded in 1970 and originally released in 1978. Comprised of a one-time international free music supergroup, and originally released as the sixth production on pianist Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink's ICP label, Groupcomposing has been largely absent from the history books. This is the case because the record has been so unavailable, certainly not as a comment on the magnitude and magnificence of the music. With i…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey presents a reissue of Milford Graves's Bäbi, originally issued in 1977 on Graves's own IPS label. This is the first reissue of one of the most legendary albums in the history of free music. Recorded live in concert in 1976, when Graves' trio with saxophonists Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover was at the height of its powers, Bäbi is a testament to the absolutely unique approach the drummer had established for himself. He had reconfigured the drum kit, removing the second heads on …

It's easy to be cynical these days, maybe difficult to imagine that music can change the world, but not for Joe McPhee and Hamid Drake. With Keep Going, they will make the planet a better place for humanity, a place to be humane, to preserve humankind. At 78 years old, Poughkeepsie multi-instrumentalist McPhee is a national treasure, and he's making more music than ever before, pushing himself to tour incessantly, issuing astonishing new records at a fierce rate. But this release, with legendary…

Some recordings, the world is just not ready for them when they're made. In 2008, Swedish born, Austrian resident saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Poughkeepsie, New York multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee made a suite of studio recordings, Brace For Impact that they loved so much they immediately culled, mixed, and mastered them. A decade later, when the original label for which they were planned had not yet issued them, Gustafsson and McPhee offered them to Corbett Vs. Dempsey, and when the label …

**2020 stock** Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Amarcord Nino Rota, a tribute album assembled by producer Hal Willner, originally released by Hannibal Records in 1981. If you think you know how to put a mix-tape together, take a lesson from Hal Willner, the absolute master. In 1981, Willner produced a landmark record of interpretations of music written by Nino Rota for the films of Federico Fellini. With ten tracks and as many different lineups, this record set the template for a series …

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Steve Lacy's Stamps, originally released in 1979 as a double-LP on Hat Hut. Stamps was Steve Lacy's first for the legendary Swiss label, and it remains one of the strongest statements of what he termed the "scratchy seventies". With the classic lineup of Lacy's soprano saxophone, Steve Potts on soprano and alto sax, Irene Aebi on cello (and singing on one track), Kent Carter on bass, and Oliver Johnson on drums, the recording catches the band live, perfor…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present the first CD reissue of Beaver Harris and Don Pullen 360º Experience's A Well-Kept Secret, originally released on Shemp Records in 1984. Of all the never-issued-on-CD items in history's dustbin, A Well-Kept Secret is perhaps the most egregious. The beautiful studio recording, made under the watchful ear of überproducer Hal Willner, was first issued on LP in 1985 on Willner's own Shemp label. With its unconventional lineup featuring steel drums, Latin percussion, and F…

Although he is best known as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker, one of the architects of structural cinema, and visual artist, Michael Snow has been active as a musician since the 1950s. In Greenwich Village of the 1960s, his loft was the site of concerts by Cecil Taylor and other paragons of free jazz, and Snow's film New York Eye And Ear Control featured a soundtrack by Albert Ayler's group and starred its members (ESPDISK 1016CD/LP). A brilliant keyboardist and occasional trumpeter, …

Never one to shy away from unusual projects, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm set out into the mosquito-infested swamps of Florida's Everglades in search of a host of amphibious collaborators. In the night air, he bowed and plucked in conversation with the environment, especially the vocalizing frogs, which seemed to take him on as an exotic member of their own. Impeccably documented by the experienced soundscape artist and field recordist Gustavo Matamoros, working like a perverse herpetologist, Lonbe…

Discussing this impending studio date, the indefatigable saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and intrepid vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz decided to compose new pieces for one another. The resulting tracks -- which also include a hallucinogenic arrangement of "Timeless", dedicated to its composer, the recently deceased guitarist John Abercrombie -- show a markedly different side of both musicians. Quiet, at times tender, this meeting of like-minded musicians evoked a new kind of tension, not one birthed o…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present The Lost Eddie Chatterbox Session, a reissue of Eugene Chadbourne's album, first released as a cassette on No Prestige Records in 1988. Dateline: Christmas Day, 1977, San Francisco. On an ailing quarter-track tape deck, in a marathon session, Eugene Chadbourne recorded a series of slide guitar solos playing compositions by the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman, along with a few standards and originals. Although the record…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Sun Ra Discipline 27-II, originally released on El Saturn Records in 1973. Arguably the last great original-era Saturn LP to be reissued on CD, Discipline 27-II has long deserved to be more familiar to Sun Ra fans and layfolk alike. Recorded during the same sessions in 1972 at Chicago's Streeterville Studios that produced Ra's most popular and best-known record, Space Is The Place (1973), it's got much the same vibe, from the 24-minute four-part suite of …

In November 1977 and May 1978, months before drummer Phillip Wilson recorded his great LP Duet with trumpeter Lester Bowie for the Improvising Artists label, Wilson hit the studio for Esoteric, a recording of solos and duets with cornetist Olu Dara. Wilson (1941-1992) was one of the keypercussionists in creative music, the Art Ensemble of Chicago's early trapsman, one third of the fusion band Full Moon, and an all around fount of invention and sensitivity. In addition to his work in the jazz and…

2015 release. On the occasion of improviser and composer Wadada Leo Smith's exhibition Ankhrasmation: The Language Scores, 1967-2015 at Chicago's Renaissance Society, Corbett Vs. Dempsey present Red Chrysanthemums, a previously unreleased live recording of solo performances by Smith, documented in Los Angeles in December of 1977. Three adventurous, spacious tracks that feature Smith's unique and innovative trumpet, as well as percussion, tuned percussion, and flute, all captured as Smith was in …

2016 release. A reissue of Jimmy Lyons's Push Pull, originally released on Hat Hut Records in 1979. Long known as Cecil Taylor's most reliable and loyal colleague, alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons has a select discography as a leader, and among its best entries is Push Pull, originally issued by Hat Hut Records as a massive three LP set. Recorded during a single marathon performance at the Collective for Living Cinema in New York in 1978, Push Pull features five extended pieces, all by Lyons, with h…

* In process of stocking * This book was published by Corbett vs. Dempsey and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago on the occasion of the exhibition: Wadada Leo Smith, Ankhrasmation: The Language Scores, 1967-2015; October 11 - October 29, 2015. A facsimile of Smith's landmark treatise first published in 1973 in an edition of 200 copies, with two additional chapters of recent vintage and an afterword by John Corbett. Design by Wadada Leo Smith (original publication), Sonnenzimmer…

A reissue of the long out-of-print first solo record by American violinist Billy Bang (1947-2011), recorded at Gaku Gallery in New York on August 12, 1979. Originally released on Hat Hut Records in 1980. Distinction Without A Difference features Bang's own compositions, extrapolated at length in an intimate live concert, as well as traditional and improvised material. Remastered from original tapes and augmented by newly discovered recordings from the same concert. Part of the large cache of his…

A reissue of the second album in the catalog of German guitarist and instrument inventor Hans Reichel (1949-2011), Bonobo, originally released by FMP in 1976. A program of microtonal string investigations that is still beguiling and fresh four decades later. Like Reichel's debut, Wichlinghauser Blues (1973), Bonobo is a super-rare slice of musical otherness. Includes the hilarious cover by Reichel himself. First ever release on CD. Remastered from original tapes; Packaged with gatefold and tip-o…

A reissue of Wichlinghauser Blues the debut album by legendary German guitar improviser and instrument inventor Hans Reichel (1949-2011), originally released on FMP in 1973. Wichlinghauser Blues is a resonant and hilarious document of the nascent genius recording his peculiar and wondrous music alone in a studio. Acoustic and unfiltered electric guitars turned back into the supremely malleable instruments they were before they'd been firmly encoded as tools for rock or pop or jazz. Reichel uses …

A reissue of King Alcohol, recorded for the German FMP label in 1972. King Alcohol is one of the landmark recordings of free jazz in Europe, a mind-blowing studio session featuring Rüdiger Carl on tenor saxophone, Günter Christmann on trombone, and the astonishing Detlef Schönenberg on drums. Volatile and precise, anticipating much of the future sound of free music in Europe but also paying homage to American antecedents like Roswell Rudd and Archie Shepp, King Alcohol is truly a lost jewel. Fir…

2016 release. Multi-instrumental master Joe McPheeand his longtime colleague, French saxophonist and clarinetist André Jaume, joined forces for this studio recording in 1979 that was prepared but never released. It is primarily structured around pairs of tunes by Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington (or Billy Strayhorn), adding Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" for good measure. The results are stunningly intimate and show the twosome's capacity for creative interplay at a fairly e…