Bomb! One-time pressing, 250 copies. Deluxe Tip-on sleeve, gold foil, glossy UV-varnish. Transparent outer sleeve with typography silkscreened on clear acetate, includes extensive large booklet. Every once in a while, recordings emerge from the shadows of time that entirely upend what is accepted and known, rewriting the constructs of history with their sounds. This is certainly the case with Postones - the latest from Corps Astral Records, De Occulta's new subsidiary imprint - comprising an astounding body of work made by Vito Ricci with Rashied Ali and Byard Lancaster during the early 1980s. Viewed through the lens of Ricci's seminal 1985 LP, Music From Memory - a groundbreaking gesture of ambient No Wave - for which he remains most celebrated and known, Postones pulls the rug from beneath most widely held perceptions of his proximity as an artist, encountering him working within intimate and enduring collaborations with two luminaries of free jazz, just prior to its release. Doubling as revelatory historical document of widely overlooked creative happenings and conjunctions within downtown New York at the time - moving between free jazz fire and percussion-driven theatre scores - this astounding document was originally released as a tiny, now virtually unobtainable cassette edition on Ricci's own Creation imprint in 1984. Corps Astral Records' stunning vinyl edition represents its first ever reissue, issued in full collaboration with Ricci and featuring fantastically illuminating liner notes penned by the artist himself.

Ricci entered the thriving creative enclave of the New York downtown - spread between Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, and what would later be called Soho - during the early 1970s, initially playing percussion with folk singers before being drawn toward electrical experiments and punk toward the end of the decade. Among the early germination points for those forthcoming creative developments occurred in 1975, when Ricci crossed paths with his neighbor, Rashied Ali: one of the great luminaries of free jazz, who had emerged during the 1960s as a drummer within the bands of John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Bill Dixon, Paul Bley, Frank Wright, Noah Howard, and Alice Coltrane, before becoming a singular bandleader in his own right. Toward the end of the 1970s, Ali turned up at Ricci's loft with his friend, the legendary multi wind instrumentalist, Byard Lancaster - illuminated by recent reissue initiatives by Superior Viaduct and Souffle Continu - a player of rare talent and vision: wholly dedicated to the furthest reaches of free improvisation, while being possessed by a profound sense of lyricism, soul, hook and groove. Hailing from Philadelphia and trained at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Lancaster was among the most noteworthy saxophonists among the generation that built upon John Coltrane's early innovations, having played with Archie Shepp, Elvin Jones, Sunny Murray, Larry Young, Burton Greene, Marzette Watts, Sun Ra, and Khan Jamal, among others.

The album's first side is taken up by a stunning concert recording from 1980 at St. Mark's Church, capturing a duo performance between Lancaster on flute, sax, and voice, and Ricci on drums and synthesizer. Deeply lyrical, guided by Lancaster's restrained tonal lines, flirting at the edges of free jazz fire and offset by Ricci's clattering polyrhythms and synth pulses, it's an absolutely engrossing run that illuminates largely unavoidable dimensions of both artists' sensibilities and work. The second side is largely dedicated to duo collaborations between Ricci and Ali, created within the live dance and theater performance context: Club Scene and Powerhouse, both accompanying a performance written and directed by Matthew Maguire at The Public Theater; and Stream / Tornado, created for Maguire's Fun City at La Mama in 1984 - a striking form of hypnotic percussion-based minimalism that nods out to numerous sonic traditions from across the globe, rooted in an intimate dialog between two artists at work in real time.

Virtually unobtainable for more than 40 years and heard by only a tiny few during that period, Postones is one of those rare reissues that, in addition to the truly engrossing sounds that it holds, operates on countless dimensions and serves to open access to previously obscure worlds. Limited to 250 copies, one-time pressing. Deluxe Tip-on Gatefold sleeve with gold foil and glossy UV-varnish; transparent outer sleeve with typography silkscreened in white on clear acetate.