★Corbett Vs. Dempsey
Space, Interiors and Exteriors, 1972
* In process of stocking * This once-lost trove of photographs date from 1972, a pivotal year for Sun Ra. Half of the photos in this book are of interior murals made by Ra-colleague and musician Ayé Aton — spectacularly beautiful in their 1970s supersaturated color. From the same period, a cache of never-published photographs taken on location in Oakland for the film Space is the Place, features Ra in full regalia, wearing beautiful Egyptian costumes. Published by PictureBox, Inc. and Corbett vs…
Seven
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…
Revenge Of The Mozabites
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…
Torturing The Saxophone
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…
Peter Kowald Quintet
Reissue, originally released in 1973. The only LP featuring a band under Peter Kowald's name, Peter Kowald Quintet comes from a vital moment in the German bassist's career. A close colleague of Peter Brötzmann's in their formative years, including the saxophonist's debut For Adolphe Sax (1967) and the classic Machine Gun (1968), Kowald had by 1972 broadened his circle of collaborators, eventually working with a who's who of global creative music. Recorded live in Berlin, released on FMP, this da…
Writing In Water
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…
The Solar-Myth Approach (Vol. 1 & 2) 2CD
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 …
The Complete Yale Concert, 1966
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…
Three Nails Left
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 …
Black Is The Color: Live in Poughkeepsie and New Windsor 1969-70
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…
Amarcord Nino Rota
**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 …
New Acoustic Swing Duo
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, …
No Time Left for Sadness
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…
Largest Afternoon
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 …
The Underflow
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…
The Shithole Country & Boogie Band
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 …
Yi Yole
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…
Tetterettet
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…
Option 1
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…
Live
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…