Founded in 2005, Corbett vs. Dempsey is a label attached to the Chicago art gallery of the same name. Featuring a mixture of new recordings and CD reissues of out-of-print LPs, CvsD's offerings focus on jazz, free jazz, and improvised music; occasional rock and rock-related noise; artist-related projects; sound art; and soon some experimentally minded dub. Many of the releases continue the archival work that John Corbett did with his Unheard Music Series, released under the Atavistic label starting in the late '90s, with Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Tom Prehn, and Sun Ra being carry-overs from UMS. Corbett's commitment to the Joe McPhee legacy led to CvsD's acquisition of McPhee's legendary Hat Hut tapes, along with the label's cache of recordings by Steve Lacy, Jimmy Lyons, and various other artists. The label's more recent offerings are packaged in tipped-on mini-LP covers, lovingly designed to reproduce the original LP packaging.
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CVSD 067CD
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The duo of saxophonist Larry Stabbins and percussionist Roy Ashbury was a mainstay of the London improvised music scene in the early 1970s. They recorded their lone LP, Fire Without Bricks, in 1976, and issued it in a tiny edition on the cooperatively run Bead label. Stabbins has toggled between more pop-oriented projects like Working Week and Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra and adventurous free music in bands led by Peter Brötzmann and Tony Oxley. Born in Wolverhampton and based initially in the Midlands, Ashbury gets less attention than his music deserves, but he, too, was an important figure in the period of the London Musician's Co-operative; he had left the scene by the mid-80s and worked in Media & Film Studies at St. Mary's College. The duo's music is super intimate and rooted in free jazz -- sometimes recalling great American saxophone/drum twosomes, or the other major touchstone of its time from closer to home, Evan Parker and Paul Lytton, but it has its own distinct flavor. Stabbins unique approach to tenor included a flinty quality and willingness to go all in on registral extremes with direct instrumental interplay on soprano, while Ashbury deploys a vast battery of metallics from chimes to chains, wood blocks, shakers, and bowed cymbals, all augmenting his minimal basic kit, which he approaches as a series of brilliant flourishes and almost Gagaku-like extended soundscapes. Their sound on this studio recording is an important untold part of the development of British improvised music. Mastered from pristine tapes, initially planned as part of John Corbett's Unheard Music Series, this reissue has been in the works for nearly two decades. Featuring facsimile cover from the original Bead issue.
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2CD
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CVSD 068CD
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The untold early history of Amsterdam's seminal collective. Founded in 1967 by three of European free music's leading lights -- pianist Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink, and saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker -- the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) was simply one of the most important vehicles for experimentation and improvisation in the history of creative music. Culling ideas and materials from jazz, modern and contemporary classical music, Fluxus, traditional music from the Balkans and elsewhere, as well as avant-garde theater, ICP was ahead of the pack in numerous ways, presenting a kind of irony-tinged, amalgamated version of free and structured improvisation -- or instant composition -- that would be a hallmark of subsequent movements in New York's downtown scene and elsewhere in Europe in decades to follow. Based on twenty years of deep research, Incipient ICP (1966-71) picks up the story just before the group's foundation, with previously unreleased recordings of groups led by Mengelberg in 1966, among them a performance of their notorious piece "Viet Cong," with Breuker joining the Mengelberg Quartet. The only tracks in this two-disc set that have been commercially released -- and only on the enormous 53-disc box set --come from studio sessions in 1967, featuring a mid-sized band with German trumpeter Manfred Schoof as special guest. These beautifully recorded tracks suggest the dichotomy between projects led by Mengelberg (two pieces) and those led by Breuker (four pieces), a schism that would grow until Breuker left the band in the mid-1970s to found his own group, the Willem Breuker Kollektief. Three more tracks led by Mengelberg in 1969 feature American keyboardist and composer Frederic Rzewski, as well as an incredible spotlight on Frans Brüggen's unusual amplified double-bass recorder. The final suite comes from a 1971 date led by Breuker, sans Mengelberg and Bennink. Moving more toward his Kolletief concept, Breuker leads a drumless quintet through his own cabaret-inflected pieces -- featuring Lodewijk de Boer's hardcore electric viola and brother Peter Bennink's alto and soprano saxophone -- as well as Albert Ayler's "Angels." The deluxe package sports contemporaneous photos of the players by Pieter Boersma.
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CVSD 073CD
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Since its first iteration in 1979, Vario has appeared in some fifty different versions, with a great variety of musicians, also actors, dancers, and filmmakers. It's the brainchild of Günter Christmann, a powerhouse of improvised music in Germany whose influence is out of scale with his acclaim. Since his emergence on the scene in the early 1970s, including appearances on classic FMP outings such as Rüdiger Carl Inc.'s King Alcohol (CVSD 032CD) and the eponymous Peter Kowald Quintet LP (CF 015LP, CVSD 070CD), as well as membership in groups like Globe Unity Orchestra and later King Übü Orchestrü, Christmann's trombone, cello, and bass playing has provided an icon of commitment to the cause of uncut improvised music, and his solo music is unparalleled. But Vario is perhaps the most central of his activities, focused on the shifting dynamics of group interplay. Vario 34 first performed in October, 1993, bringing Christmann and his contemporary, brilliant percussionist Paul Lovens, together with a triad of young upstarts -- saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, live-electronics specialist Thomas Lehn, and bassist Alexander Frangenheim. This quintet performed together for the third time in concerts on successive nights in Berlin and Christmann's hometown of Hannover in August, 2018, two gigs that were beautifully recorded. Vario 34-3 shows the strength of Christmann's concept -- a Vario ensemble is neither ad hoc nor a "working group," it's a slowly evolving organism, in this case one that has grown and changed along with its participants over the span of a quarter century. The results are high-caloric free music, brilliantly hued and textured, explosive and microcosmic. Personnel: Günter Christmann - cello, trombone; Alexander Frangenheim, double bass; Mats Gustafsson - soprano saxophone; Thomas Lehn, live-electronics; Paul Lovens - percussion. Recorded by Alexander Frangenheim and Antonio Pulli, August 21 and 22, 2018, in Berlin and Hannover. Mini-LP-style gatefold CD package with cover drawing by Christmann.
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CVSDS 002EP
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Few musicians have had the word "legendary" affixed to theirs as many times as Van Dyke Parks. A great songwriter and musician in his own right whose cult classic LPs Song Cycle and Discover America helped expand the notion of what music of the Americas really meant, Parks has left an indelible mark on contemporary music, not least through his ornately imaginative production and arrangement, including landmark projects with The Beach Boys, Harry Nilsson, and Joanna Newsom, as well as LPs produced for the Esso Steel Band and the Mighty Sparrow. For a 2020 installation piece titled "The Histories (Old Black Joe)," Philadelphia-based artist David Hartt invited Parks to make an original arrangement of the Stephen Foster song "Old Black Joe." The kaleido-phonic result constitutes the A-side of this 7" single. With a collage-like feel featuring lush orchestration that's classic Parks, the track jump-cuts from mood to mood like Carl Stalling and features an explosive steel guitar part and a parting cameo by the Esso Steel Band. The B-side is a beautiful arrangement of "Souvenir de la Havane" by the pioneering pre-jazz American Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Cover art and design by David Hartt.
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4CD
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CVSD 076CD
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In 2013, Claire Chase instigated a project designed to cultivate an entirely new body of work for flute. A MacArthur Fellow, Harvard professor, and indomitable musical force who cofounded the International Contemporary Ensemble, Chase began commissioning work, with the idea of doing so until the centennial of Edgard Varèse's seminal flute solo "Density 21.5," in 2036. This deluxe four-CD set is the first fruit of these commissions, realized in the first three years of the project, featuring 18 works by 16 composers, including the multi-part album-long composition "Pan" by Brazilian-born Marcos Balter. Composers wrote for all members of Chase's flute family, from piccolo to "Big Bertha" (her contrabass flute), as well as electronics, voice, and a handful of other instruments. Tyshawn Sorey performed percussion on his contribution and Suzanne Farrin played Ondes Martenot on hers; Roomful of Teeth collaborate with Chase on one piece, and sound designer Levy Lorenzo handles electronics throughout. Participants come from a wide range of creative contemporary music circles; they include Richard Beaudoin, Nathan Davis, Jason Eckardt, Dai Fujikura, Vijay Iyer, Felipe Lara, Mario Diaz de Leon, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, Pauchi Sasaki, Francesca Verunelli, and Du Yun, as well as the historical work by Varèse. The exquisitely detailed recordings of Density 2036 were made at the Meyer Sound Laboratories in Berkeley and session-produced by Matias Tarnopolsky over the course of four years, with no overdubbing or corrections, presenting Chase's incredible musicality in all its glory. This monumental program comes packaged as two double-CDs, sporting cover art by German artist Jorinde Voigt (with whom Chase has collaborated) and liner note essays by Suzannah Clark, John Corbett, Jennifer Judge, and Steven Schick.
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CVSD 071CD
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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 assembled into a beautiful chronological mosaic that serves as a gripping survey of early-post-Chicago Ra. It's an ideal way to start listening to his music, and for his fans absolutely essential items in the gargantuan discography. These LPs have been reissued a number of times since BYG/Actuel folded, and with each new batch the fidelity has diminished, so that they've been a pale shadow of the original recordings. For the first time, the sound has been lovingly restored to a previously unimagined level of omniversal fidelity, and one track ("Scene 1 Take 1") that was mastered at the wrong speed on the original -- perhaps a Ra idea, perhaps just a disconnect between the producers and the composer -- has been included as a bonus track remastered at the corrected speed. Packaged in the glorious original LP designs, with a definitive essay by Irwin Chusid, this is The Solar-Myth Approach as it was meant to be experienced.
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CVSD 070CD
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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 date documents a tensile ensemble, with an unusual lineup featuring two trombones -- Londoner Paul Rutherford and the German maestro Günter Christmann -- together with the less-well-known Dutch alto saxophonist (and sculptor) Peter van de Locht and brilliant German percussionist Paul Lovens. Kowald adds to the low brass when he turns from double-bass to tuba and alphorn. Spacious and fiery, these four tracks are exemplary European free music led by one of the music's foremost originals -- Kowald's rough and ready bass, which was anchoring (and de facto leading) the Globe Unity Orchestra of that period, is echoed in the take-no-prisoners music of the fivesome. Mastered from original tapes, this first-ever CD release features a facsimile version of the original cover, which featured artwork by ten non-musician friends and unique hand-additions.
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CVSD 074CD
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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 rare as hen's teeth. Writing In Water, which was recorded in 1984, is the first of a series of Corbett vs. Dempsey reissues dedicated to the label, crucial chroniclers of British improvised music. Two side-long tracks are extremely patient, multi-layered, sometimes hushed, ultimately beautiful. Long out of print and never before on CD. Exact facsimile cover. Edition of 500.
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CVSD 072CD
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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 -- the triangle squared by the addition of German bassist Peter Kowald. Just the first track, an incredible 20-plus minute burner called "Range," is worth the price of admission -- as punk rock as free music gets, it shows Parker's spectacular capabilities at high-octane blowing. Kowald adds a chewy, molasses bottom to the group, offsetting Lovens' flinty metal, stick and skin and Schlippenbach's hyper-focused intensity. This flammable configuration performed and recorded together as a regular unit in the period, making another FMP LP, The Hidden Peak (1977), and a recording later released on CD by Atavistic's Unheard Music Series. One side was reissued on a limited-edition FMP box set, together with part of The Hidden Peak, but it's never been available intact on CD. Three Nails Left is a stone cold classic of creative music. Remastered from original tapes, packaged with the original cover design by Lovens.
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2CD
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CVSD 069CD
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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 "Afro Blue" and Coltrane's "Naima," as well as McPhee-fave "God Bless The Child." Deeply emotional and fiery playing with this unusual instrumentation -- rare to find McPhee playing with a harmonically based instrument like vibes. McPhee had organized a larger group also meant to feature Bostic and a French horn for a concert at a monastery in nearby New Windsor, but the band was pared down to a quartet with saxophonist Reggie Marks, playing a powerful combination of originals and the Patty Waters-associated traditional tune "Black Is The Color." (The concert also featured a cameo by David Nelson of the Last Poets, but technical issues in the recording scuttled that and several other tracks.) Finally, three cuts document a more rough-and-tumble gig taped outdoors in the park at Poughkeepsie's Lincoln Centre -- the only surviving recordings of this funky, bluesy, lowdown, explosive configuration, they feature vocals by one Octavius Graham, great drumming by Chico Hawkins, and Tyrone Crabb on electric bass. This two-CD set has been lovingly transferred from the original tapes out of from McPhee's personal archives, and is augmented by newly discovered photographs of the concerts. A spectacular deep dive into the pure magic of Mr. McPhee.
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CVSD 075CD
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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 and accomplishing this task with technique that was almost inconceivable. His experience playing timbales in Latin bands had been formative, suggesting that the snare could be used as accent rather than beat-keeper, but by the mid '60s he'd worked up a holistic approach to sound and energy that was the most radical of his improvising percussion contemporaries. And with a simpatico accomplice like Pullen, who would go on to have an illustrious career with Charles Mingus, co-fronting a band with George Adams, and as a soloist and bandleader. This early setting finds Pullen is at his most hard-hitting, and his piano concept as heard here lays to rest dubious claims of Cecil Taylorism. Inspired by their performance, Graves and Pullen issued an LP, In Concert at Yale University, Vol. 1 on their own Self-Reliance Program imprint (1966). The vinyl is impossibly rare, especially its first copies, which sported hand-painted covers by the musicians. A second volume titled Nommo (1967) was subsequently issued, and it too is a highly prized platter. None of this music has ever been available digitally. The tapes were lost, so in putting this production together -- in the works for ten years -- virgin copies of the LPs were used. One CD includes the two complete LPs together with original cover designs, a gallery of hand-painted LPs, and a photo of Graves and Pullen selling them at a Nation of Islam convention. An insert modeled after the original one presents an interview with Graves about the production of the records. This is beyond the holy grail of free music. It is as vital and challenging today as it was more than five decades ago. Corbett Vs. Dempsey is honored to have collaborated with Milford Graves on this historic reissue. Personnel: Milford Graves - drums and percussion; Don Pullen - piano.
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CVSD 064CD
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Repressed. 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 one of the key architects of no wave via his band DNA, has proven himself once again to be one of the world's top texturalists, and he is an equally sensitive and challenging group improvisor. Vandermark and McPhee brought their long friendship and musical partnership to the studio, and both engaged with Lindsay in different ways, bringing blue flame and melody. The session's final wildcard, Sudderberg, a versatile drummer who collaborates with Vandermark on the band Marker, brought a lovely sense of buoyancy and ear for contrast in colors, as well as a raucous rock pulse. With parts this stellar, imagine when Largest Afternoon > than the sum. Nobody knew this would happen.
Recorded February 9, 2019, at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago. Engineered by Alex Inglizian. Mixed and mastered by Alex Inglizian with Ken Vandermark, John Corbett, and Jim Dempsey at ESS. Photographs by John Corbett. Cover design by David Khan-Giordano. Produced by John Corbett and Jim Dempsey. Personnel: Arto Lindsay - guitar; Joe McPhee - alto and tenor saxophone, pocket trumpet; Ken Vandermark - tenor and baritone saxophone, clarinet; Phil Sudderberg, drums.
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CVSD 063CD
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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 extreme noise to delicate texture (even a rare solo by Gustafsson on his first instrument, the flute), the CD's five tracks mark the beginning of a new group, named -- the same as the record -- after the venue at which they were recorded, the venerable Underflow Record Shop and Art Gallery in Athens, Greece. Harnessing the energy and intelligence of Grubbs's recent solo guitar records, the spirit and grit of Mazurek's hallmark work with the Chicago Underground Duo and recent Desert Encrypts project, and the monster-truck yowl of full- force Gustafsson, The Underflow is a surprise even for its participants, a present they gave themselves. Open with care, volatile contents inside.
Recorded by Manolis Aggelakis at Underflow Records and Art Gallery, Athens, Greece, on May 31, 2019. Mixed and mastered by Alex Inglizian, ESS Chicago summer 2019. Personnel: David Grubbs - guitar; Mats Gustafsson - flute, fluteophone, baritone saxophone, live electronics; Rob Mazurek - piccolo trumpet, wooden flute, electronics, percussion, voice.
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CVSD 065CD
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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 an outing whose intensity is measured not in decibels, but in emotional integrity. Across three tracks of increasing length, culminating in the 31-minute-long adventure "Next Time," McPhee (hear featured on tenor saxophone exclusively) and Lonberg-Holm redefine chamber music, casting string and reed in a joyous and longing place, a rec room set aflame, a library engulfed in tidewater, a throbbing mezzanine. The cover and the CD face feature original stained-glass works by Lonberg-Holm, and the interior spread is entirely given over to an action shot of the duo by Stevphen Shukaitis.
Recorded at Lone Pine Studios, January 11, 2019. Engineered by Eli Winograd. Mixed by Fred Lonberg-Holm. Mastered by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago. Photo of JM and FLH by Stevphen Shukaitis. Cover image: Gary Series #1, by Fred Lonberg-Holm. Personnel: Joe McPhee - tenor saxophone; Fred Lonberg-Holm cello/electronics.
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CVSD 062CD
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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 of Cologne's seminal Kompakt label Wolfgang Voigt to edit and remix two of the twisted tracks. The CD's other guest star, engineer Martin Siewert, contributes guitar and lap top guitar to a couple of tracks. Not your usual any kind of music, The Shithole Country & Boogie Band bends genres and upends style. Spasmodic dance music or highly conceptual experimental sound art -- it's a thin line Gondeln and Gustafsson tread on these eight diverse tracks, but an irresistibly fun one, too.
Personnel: Wendy Gondeln - violin, electronic treatments, and more; Mats Gustafsson - piano mate, saxophones, and live electronics; Wolfgang Voigt - editing and mix (track 3 and 8); Martin Siewert - guitar and lap top guitar (track 1 and 7).
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2CD
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CVSD 066CD
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Restocked. 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, occasional sneering tone adds a kind of ironic twist to the expressive outpouring. He could be as explosive as Peter Brötzmann, but Breuker has a razor-sharp wit and sense of humor. Since this recording, Bennink has gone on to be seated among the royalty of jazz and improvised music drummers. At the time, he was a fresh-faced 25-year-old, hauling around increasingly immense kits with heaps of percussion flotsam and jetsam, playing tabla and vibrapan, and sparking it all with tsunami energy. Keep in mind, Coltrane and Ali had just recorded Interstellar Space (which would not be issued until 1974), and the economical drum/sax lineup was by no means yet a standard in improvised music. Shortly after recording this, Breuker and Bennink would join Brötzmann to record Machine Gun (1968), another European free music keystone. Somehow, despite its historical importance and aesthetic magnificence, New Acoustic Swing Duo has never been available as a stand-alone CD. Remastered from original tapes, this reissue includes the original cover with the "ICP 001" hand-stamp, as well as several versions of the handmade covers designed by Bennink, drawn from Mats Gustafsson's wonderful collection. Finally, as a special bonus, the two-disc package includes a legendary concert by Breuker and Bennink, recorded in Essen, Germany, in 1968, released here for the first time.
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CVSD 060CD
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Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of ICP Tentet's Tetterettet, originally released in 1977. Recorded 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. In this period, Brötzmann made the long train trip from Wuppertal, Germany, to A'dam on a weekly basis to rehearse with ICP, bassist Silva coming in from Paris. Well known for his work in pioneer creative music ensembles such as the New York Art Quartet and the New York Contemporary Five and on John Coltrane's Ascention (1976), Tchicai was the Paul Desmond of free jazz, with a softer, more subtle phraseology than many of his peers. These international figures joined pianist Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink -- whose ICP co-founder Willem Breuker had broken off to form what would become his long-time working band, the Kollektief -- and their outrageous, hyper-inventive big band. Michel Waiswicz, who invented the crackle box, a user-friendly, portable electronic instrument, is a defining presence on Mengelberg's multipart "Tetterettet," and along with the heavyweight out-of-towners the band includes composer, oboist, and saxophonist Gilius Van Bergeyk, whose sequence of compositions nestle perfectly into Misha's, Han's gifted brother Peter Bennink on saxes, trombonist Bert Koppelaar, and cellist Tristan Honsinger, who has continued to work with the ensemble even after Misha's death in 2017. One of the landmark records of Mengelberg tunes, with classics like "Rumboon" and "Alexander's Marschbefehel", Tetterettet presents a program full of musical surprises, intelligence, and ICP's own brand of uproarious humor. A shaggy masterpiece, available here for the first time as a stand-alone CD, remastered from the original tapes, with Han Bennink's original cover design and a contemporaneous photo from the archives of Gérard Rouy.
ICP Tentet: Misha Mengelberg - piano; John Tchicai - alto and soprano saxophone; Gilius van Bergeyk - alto saxophone, oboe; Peter Bennink - alto and sopranino saxophone; Peter Brötzmann - alto, tenor and baritone saxophone; Bert Koppelaar - trombone; Tristan Honsinger - cello; Michel Waisvisz - crackle box; Alan Silva - bass; Han Bennink - drums, bass clarinet.
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CVSD 057CD
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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 ever been issued, it would have followed on the band's debut, New Horizons, released on Dogtown Records in 1972. Sounds of Liberation formed in early 1970, initially lead by vibraphonist Warren Robert Cheeseboro, aka Khan Jamal, but it wasn't until the eventual arrival of Byard Lancaster that the band's prospects started to take off. Lancaster was a master at making a deal. This deal-making lead to more gigs and more recognition, especially from local newspapers. Sounds of Liberation was more of a community than a band at times and because of that spirit there was a strong desire by the entire group to work with schoolchildren as well as inmates. They did just that, and continued to do so throughout the early to mid-70s. Released briefly in 2018 as a special edition of 100 copies by Brewerytown Beats, the music on Sounds of Liberation has never been heard before. Shoulder-deep in groove juice, it's a record with heavy ostinato and beautiful backbeats, including the mellowing influence of Jamal's vibes and the incisive guitar of Monette Sudler, the final track featuring an unidentified vocal group singing a stone-cold soul hit, also featuring some searing saxophone courtesy of Mr. Lancaster. A treasure for fans of so-called spiritual jazz and free funk, Sounds of Liberation is a snapshot of its era and equally an inspiration in ours. The package comes with never seen photos of the band and a cover design by artist LeRoy Butler, who worked with the SoL in the era, at the same time he was designing records for Sun Ra. Lovingly coaxed from long-unplayed original tapes, Sounds of Liberation is a new line item in the soul improvisation pantheon.
Personnel: Byard Lancaster - flute, alto saxophone; Khan Jamal - vibraphone; Monnette Sudler - guitar; Billy Mills - bass; Dwight James - drums; Rashid Salime - congos; Omar Hill - percussion; vocalists on "New Horizon/Backstreets of Heaven" are unidentified. Recorded at Columbia University, NYC, in 1973.
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2CD
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CVSD 059CD
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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 consortium of major international art galleries, each of whom underwrote a month of events. As is always the case at ESS, the music was recorded, and in the end an astonishing archive of tapes was produced, from which 15 tracks were selected and programmed onto two CDs for Option 1, the first compilation of the series. The artists featured on the program are Susan Alcorn (lap steel guitarist and winner of the 2018 Instant Award in Improvised Music), the Chicago-based team of Lou Mallozzi & Douglas Ewart (Lunch With Money), veteran percussionist Gerry Hemingway, Norwegian pianist Håvard Wiik, Luke Stewart, Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen & Kent Kessler, trumpeter Greg Kelley, Ben Goldberg & Michael Coleman, Bonnie Jones, the impossible piano of Kris Davis, Wayne Horvitz & Sara Schoenbeck, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, Chattanooga's own LaDonna Smith, Booker Stardrum, Beth McDonald & Dave Rempis, and young guitar sensation Sandy Ewen. By turns haunting, abrasive, lyrical, absurd, bracing, and hilarious, Option 1 in fact offers many different options -- a smorgasbord of alternatives representing the exciting, multifaceted reality of free music in its contemporary manifestation.
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CD
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CVSD 061CD
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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 mid-sixties and settled in London. There he worked with all of the leading lights of free improvised music, recording extensively with the Brotherhood of Breath and eventually releasing LPs under his own leadership before his untimely passing in 1990 at the age of 51. What the three tracks on Yi Yole make clear is how surprisingly well the Dutch and South African sensibilities fit together, an overall relaxed vibe leading to unforeseen directions in the music. Han Bennink ranges far beyond his drum kit and its metallic add-ons, playing trombone, clarinet, and viola; his collage design for the record, as with all ICP productions, is brilliant and perfectly matched to the music. This is the only time these three prime movers of free music would record as a trio, hitting just at the moment when the Instant Composers Pool was gaining momentum and South African jazz was growing in international stature. Released on ICP, Mengelberg/Bennink's self-produced label, Yi Yole saw limited distribution and attention in its time, but it remains an absolute classic of improvised music, presented here in all its glory with Bennink's design, remastered from original tapes, the box of which is reproduced on the interior spread, replete with never-seen hand notations.
Personnel: Dudu Pukwana - alto saxophone, whistle; Misha Mengelberg - piano; Han Bennink - drums, clarinet, viola, trombone.
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CVSD 058CD
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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, Corbett Vs. Dempsey were completely hooked. Zetterberg is a Mingus for our times. He's a composer of unusual means -- great sense for how to harmonize his inventive melodies; how to make a sextet sound like a big band and how to clear space for an unaccompanied solo; his slightly devious sense of humor underlying all the drive and swing that make the best in a bass player; and best of all a respect for his musicians, who have always found ways to push his great compositions up a notch. This luminous set of tracks was recorded in performance at Stockholm's famed Jazzclub Fasching. It presents a newly named ensemble, Torbjörn Zetterberg & The Great Question, with Kullhammar and Alberto Pinton on saxophones and clarinets, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, trombonist Mats Äleklint, and drummer Jon Fält. With the exception of the opening passage, which adapts the traditional "Cherry Tree Carol", all compositions are by Zetterberg, and they make a solid case for him as a jazz writer to be taken seriously. Joyful, powerful, irreverent, and utterly fearless, The Great Question presents its case, answers the initial query, and asks more probing ones. Gatefold packaging features artwork by Karl Wirsum, one of the original Hairy Who painters of Chicago fame, and a portrait of Zetterberg by photographer Peter Gannushkin.
Personnel: Torbjörn Zetterberg - double bass; Susana Santos Silva - trumpet, tin whistle; Mats Äleklint - trombone, harmonica; Jonas Kullhammar - tenor saxophone, flute; Alberto Pinton - baritone saxophone, clarinet, flute; Jon Fält - drums.
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CVSD 054CD
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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 it?!!" The music on Nation Time came out of a fertile, but little-known creative jazz scene in Poughkeepsie, New York, McPhee's home base. Two bands were deployed, one with a funky free foundation featuring guitar and organ, the other consisting of a more standard jazz formation, with two drummers and the brilliant Mike Kull at the piano. Across the concert and the next afternoon's audience-less recording session, the band was ignited by McPhee's passion and his gorgeous post-Coltrane/post-Pharoah tenor. On "Shakey Jake," they hit a James Brown groove filtered through Archie Shepp, while the sidelong title track is as searching and poignant today as it was during its heyday. Originally released in 1971 on CjR, an imprint started expressly to document McPhee's work, Nation Time has a sense of urgency and inspiration. Additional material from those December days would later appear on Black Magic Man (1975), Hat Hut's first release. In fact, the first four records on the seminal Swiss label all featured McPhee. Nation Time was largely unknown a quarter century or so later, when it was first issued on CD through the Unheard Music Series. On Corbett vs. Dempsey, the album was reissued along with all known tapes leading up to and around it as a CD box set (CVSD 011CD, 2017), but the standalone album has remained incredibly rare. In preparing to reissue the CD on its own, a new, previously unknown tape was discovered with three tracks recorded at the original concert in 1970. These include an intense version of Coltrane's "Naima"; all of them feature pianist Kull, and none have been issued before this. Personnel: Joe Mcphee - Tenor/soprano saxophones, trumpet; Mike Kull - piano, electric piano; Tyrone Crabb -, bass, electric bass, trumpet; Bruce Thompson - drums, percussion; Ernest Bostic - drums, percussion; Otis Greene - alto saxophone; Herbie Lehman - organ; Dave Jones - electric guitar.
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CVSD 053CD
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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 Chicago percussionist Drake, is something extremely special in the midst of many special records. The duo first recorded together in 1999, having only played together a limited number of times; the resulting music was issued as Emancipation Proclamation on the OkkaDisk label. When the opportunity arose to hit the studio for a second time, McPhee and Drake had two more decades of extensive work together under their belts, as members of the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet and in many other contexts. But the session somehow consolidated their shared energy in an unexpected way; the drummer's incredible warmth and sense of buoyancy, the saxophonist and trumpeter's preternatural musicality and quest for social justice. The recording started with McPhee reciting words by Harriett Tubman, resulting in the title track; Drake's support was an achingly slow Max Roach-like beat. From this inspired, inspiring starting point, the twosome frolicked through a rich program, McPhee donning tenor and alto saxes, and pocket trumpet, Drake turning momentarily to the frame drum. Each musician contributes an introspective solo track. McPhee at one point plays trumpet into an open gong, which gives him otherworldly overtones, a sort of acoustic version of electric Miles. Drake makes too few records, so anything of his is mandatory; McPhee's been on a roll lately, releasing lots of music, but Keep Going is one not to be missed.
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CVSD 055CD
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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 couldn't believe the music. As searching and searing as anything either of them has made, the duets lived up to their explosive title. Gustafsson is known for his energy, and it's here in droves, but there are other nuances brought out by McPhee, a supple sense of melodicism (hey now, Gustafsson is a Swede, so by birthright he's melodic) and the love of experimental sound-making that McPhee displayed on his sound-on-sound recordings in the late 1960s. Although the two wind-players have worked together very extensively in Peter Brötzmann's large groups, with McPhee as a guest in Gustafsson's band The Thing, and in all manner of large and small group improvisations, they have never issued a record of duets before. This duo debut, now a decade in the can, is insanely powerful. Prepare yourself for the impact. Cover image by Charline von Heyl, interior photo of McPhee and Gustafsson bracing themselves back in 2002 by John Corbett. The package is completed by a haunting cover image by artist Cauleen Smith.
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2CD
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CVSD 052CD
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R.I.P. Milford Graves, 1941-2021. Please watch the amazing Jake Meginsky documentary film "Milford Graves Full Mantis" if you haven't had the chance (streaming freely in the world).
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 all the drums and replacing the snare with two toms, which allowed him a much more nuanced sense of indirectness in his multi-directional adventures in time. The track "Ba" remains one of the most astonishing feats of percussion alchemy ever waxed, as funky as ten slap bassists and as free as an exploding grenade. Doyle and Glover are incendiary, too, inspired by Graves to new and shocking heights of achievement, their hoarse cries and whistling split-tones carried to thrilling plateaus on the energy of Graves' hands and feet. The original tapes for the session have been lost, so the reissue was lovingly remastered from virgin vinyl, itself now worth a mint. In 2017, Graves discovered a previously unknown tape in his archives featuring the same trio at its inception, in home recordings made seven years earlier, in 1969. Graves pummels a huge gong while Glover plays an instrument that, after sounding like none ever known, turns out to be bass clarinet. Extreme music recorded up close and very hot, it is among the most searing sessions never heard, until now. Rounding out the two-CD package are three previously unpublished photos by Gérard Rouy, and the original LP cover design by Graves himself.
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