★Corbett Vs. Dempsey
Sounds of Liberation
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 …
Nation Time
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 …
Groupcomposing
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…
Babi
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 …
Keep Going
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…
Brace For Impact
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 …
Stamps
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…
A Well-Kept Secret
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…
Duol
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, …
Bow Hard At The Frog
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…
Timeless
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…
The Lost Eddie Chatterbox Session
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…
The Willisau Concert
Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Joe McPhee's The Willisau Concert, originally released on Hat Hut Records in 1976. Asked earlier this year which of his out-of-print records he'd like to see available again, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's response was immediate: The Willisau Concert! Recorded at the Swiss festival that gave it its name in 1975, it appeared a year later as "Hat Hut B", the second of the new label's great letter series. It came packaged gorgeously in a double-gat…
Discipline 27-II
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 …
Esoteric
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…
Red Chrysanthemums: Solos 1977
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 …
Cosmic Love
Joe McPhee on seven inches of pure loving vinyl. Features two versions of the 1970 classic "Cosmic Love". McPhee rocking the cosmic wavelength on space organ and tenor sax. Recorded in Poughkeepsie, NY, 1970; Produced by John Corbett; Vinyl project coordinated by Marc Bonadies. Cover artwork by Dick Higgins. 33 1/3 rpm.
Distinction Without A Difference
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…
Bonobo
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…
Wichlinghauser Blues
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 …