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 089CD
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One of the architects of no wave with his band DNA, a pioneer of noise guitar, sublimely inventive producer, and slinkily seductive songwriter, Arto Lindsay has worn countless musical hats. Invited to make a solo record for the Black Cross Solo Sessions, Lindsay boiled it down to essential ingredients, waxing a collection of bristling new songs and works for solo guitar; on six of a baker's dozen tracks, his angelic voice offsets the bracing dissonance of his acidic electric. Recorded at studios in Brooklyn and Araras, Brazil, Charivari has the intensity of a killer live session; it's closer in vibe to the more aggressive side of his work -- think of his trio outing Aggregates 1-26 or the barbed riffs of classic DNA -- than gorgeously arranged solo songwriting records like O Corpo Sutil (The Subtle Body). In these razor sharp cuts you may well discover the identity of what, in the song "Nothing," Lindsay calls "holier than thou timing." CD contains full transcriptions of Lindsay's lyrics. Cover artwork and design by Christopher Wool.
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CVSD 088CD
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One of the towering creative musicians of our time, a master drummer and percussionist, Hamid Drake has anchored innumerable bands. As a hard-working player, constantly touring the globe, he's collaborated with most of the major figures in improvised music and contemporary jazz, from David Murray and Peter Brötzmann to Pharoah Sanders and Don Cherry. Along the way, Drake has never had an opportunity to stop and make a solo record. Indeed, he's only performed solo on a few occasions. John Corbett began petitioning Drake to record an unaccompanied session twenty years ago. At last, after the pandemic had (just slightly) slowed down Drake's incessant travel itinerary, a plan was hatched and he entered Experimental Sound Studio during the cold, hard month of December, 2020. With Corbett, Jim Dempsey, and engineer Alex Inglizian as his audience, Drake worked through a vaguely plotted-out blueprint, however after a few months had passed, the drummer was unsatisfied with the result. He returned to the studio in July, 2021, with no pre-planned notion, and this time the Hamid Drake magic was everywhere -- perched on his drum-throne, working exclusively at the kit, sometimes plying metallic percussion atop the snare, Drake recorded nine tracks, a cornucopia of rhythms and textures that touch on his love of reggae and funk but retain the openness and buoyancy that have made him such a go-to figure among his peers. In the CD's liner notes, he says: "A dedication in spirit to all those who have influenced, helped, opened, nurtured, shown love for, and cared for me along the way." These include Brötzmann's band Die Like a Dog, long-term percussion pal Adam Rudolph and mentor Fred Anderson, fellow drummers Paul Lovens and Milford Graves, Don and Moki Cherry, Big Black, and others. The record, precisely and soulfully recorded by Inglizian, has the beauty and warmth that always radiate from Drake's sticks, from his person and spirit -- deep humanity in the form of an unstoppable engine room. Cover art by Christopher Wool.
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CVSDLP 008LP
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In the year that Juneteenth was finally declared a national US holiday, 2021, Joe McPhee and Tomeka Reid united for a live concert in celebration. Multi-instrumentalist McPhee was deeply moved by the historical nature of the circumstances, the incredible freight of that history of oppression and liberation represented in the legislation, both the insanity of its overdue-ness and the joy of its institutionalization. As a preamble to the music, McPhee led off with two poems, read with trembling, vehement intensity: "Alone Together" and "Nation Time For Real This Time." Then, without a pause, they launched into a 33-minute duet for tenor saxophone and cello that gutted everyone in the packed audience, alighting for a brief segment on the late-19th century hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the so-called African-American National Anthem, lyrics from which the title of the record is taken. At the concert's end, McPhee was nearly inconsolable, the immensity of the day and the emotion of the playing overtaking him alone in the dressing room. Let Our Rejoicing Rise is a kind of apotheosis, an outpouring of two sensitive souls at the dawn of a new day in an epoch of damnation. With a jubilant cover image by Gee's Bend quilter Mary Lee Bendolph, recorded and mastered by Alex Inglizian, it's a once-in-a-lifetime record.
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CVSD 087CD
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Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson might have a separate discography for his solo records. He's investigated the possibilities of unaccompanied reed music from almost every angle. Presented with the opportunity to make a new solo record under the isolation of the pandemic, Gustafsson returned to a project he'd conceptualized but never realized: the playing-card pieces of Peter Brötzmann. Although these Fluxus-like prompts are better known through the two card sets the German saxophonist created in the 1990s, which resulted in two CDs with his Chicago Tentet, Images and Signs (both released on Okka Disk in 2004), Brötzmann had in fact been using cards since the 1970s. Recording in his home studio in Nickelsdorf, Austria, Gustafsson used two of these sets of compositional prompts, one designed for the ICP Tentet and another intended as a spur for Brötzmann's own solo work. The instrumentation on Naja includes the entire saxophone family from sopranino to bass, as well as a piece for mouthpieces; this is also a rare opportunity to hear Gustafsson play more than one horn at the same time, a Roland Kirk move that he'd long ago sworn off but was prompted to do by the cards. In addition to nine pieces using the cards, Gustafsson played one non-card composition from Brötzmann's solo FMP LP 14, Love Poems. Stunningly mixed and mastered by Martin Siewert, with liner notes by Gustafsson, photos of the card boxes and the first photograph of Gustafsson and Brötzmann. Cover art, as on all Black Cross Solo Sessions CDs, by Christopher Wool.
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CVSDLP 004LP
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Repertoire for cello represents a little-explored niche of the greater jazz songbook. In 2013, cellists Tomeka Reid and Fred Lonberg-Holm turned their arranger-ly and composer-ly attention to this terrain, assembling a selection of four originals (three by Lonberg-Holm, one by Reid) and four works by other composers. The latter include "Pluck It" by pioneering jazz cellist Fred Katz, member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet and soundtrack composer for Roger Corman films; "In Walked Ray" by intrepid hardbop bassist and cellist Sam Jones, who worked extensively with Cannonball Adderley; "Rally" by legendary bassist and cellist Ron Carter, who played with everyone from Miles Davis to Eric Dolphy to A Tribe Called Quest; and "Monti-Cello" by Harry Babsin, the least recognizable name in the group who played cello duets with Oscar Pettiford and recorded the first jazz cello solos with Dodo Marmarosa Trio in 1947. These new takes on old charts provide a storied backdrop and contemporary diving-board for Reid and Lonberg-Holm. By turns achingly beautiful -- utilizing all the woody resonance of the twinned instruments -- and probingly exploratory, they pay reverence to and also rethink their predecessors' music. Alongside these historically-mined tracks are the player's own deeply engaging compositions. Reid's "Alla Mingus For La Bang" pays homage to one stringsman by way of another: bassist Charles Mingus to violinist Billy Bang. Lonberg-Holm's "Fragile, C'mon," and "How Can We?" all investigate the bowed and pizz'ed cosmos of the celli with devilish relish. Gorgeously recorded direct-to-stereo sans audience at Chicago's Logan Art Center, with a cover that sports a painting by Lonberg-Holm.
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CVSDLP 007LP
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Torbjörn Zetterberg's new record, Opinions, is not a conventional "solo" outing. It doesn't represent the bassist, composer, and bandleader stepping away from all that to prove his mettle as a virtuoso unaccompanied improvisor. Anyone familiar with Zetterberg's small group recordings needs no confirmation of his prowess. And anyway, strutting his stuff is not his vibe. Certainly not the vibe of this record, where the bassist plays more than bass, a solo venture on which he is occasionally joined by others. What we have on Opinions is something altogether different, nearly impossible to describe except in parts -- minimal electronic/maximal prog/eco conceptual/experimental song form. With myriad instruments and multitrack studio composition, painstakingly assembled 2020-22, the LP's tracks have an episodic nature, and in this sense -- perhaps this alone -- they connect with other parts of the Swedish musician's oeuvre, his propensity for contrasting and juxtaposing sections, which can be deliciously heard on his records with The Torbjörn Zetterberg Hot Fiveor Torbjörn Zetterberg and Den Stora Frågen (including the latter ensemble's 2019 CD Live, also on Corbett Vs. Dempsey). But Opinions is a stand-alone work, a strange and wondrous personal adventure, a set of landscape miniatures contained in a bottle, each one equally abstract and actual, heady and guttural, melodic and textural, reaching for elements from across the musical map but never as pastiche, rather as deeply submerged influence, meditative result, a splash in icy water after the opium of sauna. Not your everyday solo record. Opinions introduces something particular: a chunk of raw coal buried far below surface that emerges faceted and glisten-y. Torbjörn Zetterberg writes: "This is without a doubt my best work so far. If you know me, you probably know me as a bass playing jazz musician. Yes, that's true, but pretty far from the whole truth. You'll be surprised. Not that this isn't jazz. Perhaps it is. If you say it is, why? If you say it's not, why? If you know the answer, please let me know. Me, I only hear music. The 'concept' behind this album was: not to box myself but to let creativity lead the way, all the way. I took guidance from the smallest kids in the playground. Apart from 'Brevet Från Lillan,' which was recorded at Zengården, the Zen Buddhist monastery where I live, everything was recorded in my apartment and my studio in Stockholm. Apart from drums on 'Random Thoughts,' which were played by Konrad Agnas, and Anna Högberg's alto sax on 'Opinions part 2,' I did everything myself including samples, singing, playing all instruments, recording, mixing, and mastering..."
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CVSD 090CD
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Every day over the course of a year starting in June, 2020, in something she refers to as a "domestic ritual," Zeena Parkins recorded solo electric harp performances in her home studio. The brilliant improvisor and composer had, like most of her peers, been sidelined by the pandemic; unable to tour, she spent the end of each day at the harp, playing until sunlight waned, inventing and discovering new soundscapes, keeping her musical self together while the world seemed poised to crumble. Parkins's audience consisted of her boyfriend, filmmaker Jeff Preis (who filmed and recorded all the music) and their dog. Invited to participate in the Black Cross Solo Sessions, she returned to this deep well of recordings and selected ten tracks, augmenting the harp with pedals and resonant and resonating objects including bells and other percussion. To Dusk is a uniquely vibrating set of auditory investigations, a buzzing, ringing, hammering, plunging suite of instant compositions snatched from the maw of a malicious moment in the world's collective history. Liner notes by Zeena Parkins. Cover artwork and design by Christopher Wool.
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CVSD 091CD
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Reissue, originally released in 1967. In 1966, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach assembled his first large ensemble to play his compositions "Globe Unity" and "Sun." This 14-piece band, which brought together some of the leading figures in European improvised music, would eventually expand -- incorporating not only Europeans but also American and Asian musicians -- and assume its rightful name: Globe Unity Orchestra. In its nascent outing, beautifully recorded at Ariola Studio in Cologne, Schlippenbach's band was already sensational, performing at various festivals and solidifying the reputations of some of its star players. Most notably among these was a 25-year-old saxophonist named Peter Brötzmann, whose whole band -- saxophonist Kris Wanders, drummer Mani Neumeier, and bassist Peter Kowald, the latter of whom would for a period assume nominal leadership of Globe Unity -- was incorporated into the large Schlippenbach group. Globe Unity was Brötzmann's first outing on LP. Kowald's too. And future drum heroes of the krautrock genre, Neumeier (with Guru Guru) and Jaki Liebezeit (with Can) constitute the incredible rhythm section. If you factor in German early-free-music mainstays Gunter Hampel (here on flute and bass clarinet, no vibes), trumpeter Manfred Schoof, bassist Buschi Niebergall, and tenor saxophonist Gerd Dudek, Dutch saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker, French trumpeter Claude Deron, the enormity of the band's potential becomes apparent. Add Schlippenbach himself, an absolute cyclone on the piano as well as prominent tubular bells and gong, and the global scene is set. Schlippenbach's unique position at the time, as one of the foremost players in German free music, but also as a rising young composer who'd studied with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, allowed him to serve as exactly the right conduit for several approaches to creative music, from introducing his graphically notated scores to making a perfect context for the debuts of future star improvisors Brötzmann and Kowald. Schlippenbach's Globe Unity was first issued on SABA in 1967, then MPS a couple of years after that. It has long been out-of-print and has only ever appeared on CD in a tiny Japanese version published in 1999. Corbett vs. Dempsey's reissue comes with facsimile cover. The music was remastered from the original tapes and is licensed directly from MPS. Anyone interested in the history of improvised music needs to hear Globe Unity, which retains a sense of urgency 56 years after it was waxed.
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CVSDLP 003LP
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LP version. Reissue, originally released in 1967. In 1966, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach assembled his first large ensemble to play his compositions "Globe Unity" and "Sun." This 14-piece band, which brought together some of the leading figures in European improvised music, would eventually expand -- incorporating not only Europeans but also American and Asian musicians -- and assume its rightful name: Globe Unity Orchestra. In its nascent outing, beautifully recorded at Ariola Studio in Cologne, Schlippenbach's band was already sensational, performing at various festivals and solidifying the reputations of some of its star players. Most notably among these was a 25-year-old saxophonist named Peter Brötzmann, whose whole band -- saxophonist Kris Wanders, drummer Mani Neumeier, and bassist Peter Kowald, the latter of whom would for a period assume nominal leadership of Globe Unity -- was incorporated into the large Schlippenbach group. Globe Unity was Brötzmann's first outing on LP. Kowald's too. And future drum heroes of the krautrock genre, Neumeier (with Guru Guru) and Jaki Liebezeit (with Can) constitute the incredible rhythm section. If you factor in German early-free-music mainstays Gunter Hampel (here on flute and bass clarinet, no vibes), trumpeter Manfred Schoof, bassist Buschi Niebergall, and tenor saxophonist Gerd Dudek, Dutch saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker, French trumpeter Claude Deron, the enormity of the band's potential becomes apparent. Add Schlippenbach himself, an absolute cyclone on the piano as well as prominent tubular bells and gong, and the global scene is set. Schlippenbach's unique position at the time, as one of the foremost players in German free music, but also as a rising young composer who'd studied with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, allowed him to serve as exactly the right conduit for several approaches to creative music, from introducing his graphically notated scores to making a perfect context for the debuts of future star improvisors Brötzmann and Kowald. Schlippenbach's Globe Unity was first issued on SABA in 1967, then MPS a couple of years after that. It has long been out-of-print and has only ever appeared on CD in a tiny Japanese version published in 1999. Corbett vs. Dempsey's reissue comes with facsimile cover. The music was remastered from the original tapes and is licensed directly from MPS. Anyone interested in the history of improvised music needs to hear Globe Unity, which retains a sense of urgency 56 years after it was waxed.
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CVSD 092CD
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German pianist Georg Gräwe, one of the most impeccable and imaginative improvisers in contemporary free music, made his debut recording, New Movements, in 1976, under the auspices of Free Music Production, the legendary Berlin-based organization run by Jost Gebers. At FMP's Jazz Now festival, in April of that year, Gräwe presented his working band, a classic hard-bop configuration with trumpet, saxophone, and rhythm section. Indeed, some vestiges of that hard-bop feel permeate the music, however it's been fractured and expanded in its ambitions to include post-bop, freebop, free jazz, and free improvisation, all with an overall set of structures that betray Gräwe's deep interest in contemporary classical forms. It is an audacious debut, one of the most thrilling jazz-related European outings to emerge from the FMP program. Tenor and soprano saxophonist Harald Dau is spectacular, reminiscent in places of the great Gerd Dudek's work with Manfred Schoof Sextett -- tough as nails, free within a blues-oriented context, totally inventive. He's matched by lithe trumpeter Horst Grabosch, and Gräwe's rhythm team is impeccable, with Hans Schneider's bass and Achim Kramer's drums. The album kicks off with a 22-minute-long rollercoaster ride written by Gräwe, and continues with two more long tracks by Dau, all of them featuring thrilling interplay and brilliant tunes. First reissue since it was first available in the mid-1970s. Licensing directly from FMP, with newly remastered music direct from the original tapes, CvsD put this important piece of free music history back into circulation, throwing light on the early years of Georg Gräwe's music and expanding the picture of what FMP's vanguard mission meant. Edition of 500.
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CVSD 093CD
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German pianist Georg Gräwe, one of the most impeccable and imaginative improvisers in contemporary free music, made his debut recording, New Movements, in 1976, under the auspices of Free Music Production, the legendary Berlin-based organization run by Jost Gebers. At FMP's Jazz Now festival, in April of that year, Gräwe presented his working band, a classic hard-bop configuration with trumpet, saxophone, and rhythm section. Indeed, some vestiges of that hard-bop feel permeate the music, however it's been fractured and expanded in its ambitions to include post-bop, freebop, free jazz, and free improvisation, all with an overall set of structures that betray Gräwe's deep interest in contemporary classical forms. The band featured tenor and soprano saxophonist Harald Dau, matched by lithe trumpeter Horst Grabosch, and Gräwe's rhythm team is impeccable, with Hans Schneider's bass and Achim Kramer's drums. The same band hit the stage a year and a half later, again for FMP, recording Pink Pong. Even more adventurous and tightly wired, this version of Gräwe's fivesome plays more concise compositions, a total of eleven of them, spread out almost evenly amongst band members. The resulting album is one of FMP's absolute classics, simultaneously a nod at precursors like Alexander von Schlippenbach's early groups and Manfred Schoof's killer mid-sized ensembles, but also indicating a new path for a younger set of players. Steeped in a love of folks like Lennie Tristano and Steve Lacy, the band's points of reference were diverse enough to make them stand out against some of the more exclusively hard-blowing Germans of the era. First reissue since it was first available in the mid-1970s. Licensing directly from FMP, with newly remastered music direct from the original tapes, CvsD put this important piece of free music history back into circulation, throwing light on the early years of Georg Gräwe's music and expanding the picture of what FMP's vanguard mission meant. Edition of 500.
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CVSD 094CD
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Subtitled some more guitar solos, Bonobo Beach was German guitarist and instrument inventor Hans Reichel's fourth and final record of solo guitar works. After this record, Reichel would turn much of his attention to the bowed wooden-tongued instrument he created called the daxophone. Reichel recorded the six tracks at his home in Wuppertal in April, 1981, and in the process made what might be his masterpiece. These are not just some more guitar solos. Concentrating largely on acoustic guitar with no frets as well as his electric pick-behind-the-bridge guitar, he transforms tones into crystalline formations -- patience with resonances, attention to silence, formation of symmetries around a common sonic point, jetting notes that arc and spread and then hover. One might look for other references to describe what Reichel is up to -- the magic of Terje Rypdal, the aura of early William Ackerman, the eccentric multiple pickups of Fred Frith -- but really this is unique in guitar repertoire. Reichel built his instruments as tools for improvised exploration, and then he dove deep into them, never so far as on tracks like "Could Be Nice" or the quivering "Southern Monologue," or the two brilliant versions of the title track, "Bonobo Beach." On "Two Small Pieces Announced by a Cigar-Box," the titular box is bowed in a vocal manner that portends Reichel's development of the daxophone. This CD reissue, licensed directly from FMP, restores Reichel's original artwork and design for the LP, as well as an amusing insert tracking the development of his guitars from 1972-1981. A beautiful, essential document from one of the great outsider guitarists of all time. Edition of 500.
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CVSD 095CD
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What could possibly happen when two ultimate masters of soprano saxophone square off for their only recording of duets? Chirps is the only place to find out. Steve Lacy -- the one who planted the flag for soprano saxophone in the ground of modern jazz, who established its iconic status, who devoted himself to the axe with monkish devotion, who brought shakuhachi breath and stairstep melody into its upper-register antics. Evan Parker -- arguably the one who pushed the instrument the furthest post-Coltrane, the technical marvel, the polyphonist, the one willing to immerse in the instrument's harshest environs and find things of radiant beauty. Performed in Berlin at the Haus am Waldsee in July, 1985, it was every bit the chamber concert -- super intimate and interactive, gorgeously recorded by FMP's Jost Gebers in an ideal acoustic room. Rather than alternate between one and the other, Lacy and Parker explore middle-terrain the whole time, perhaps skewing a tad more Lacy's funky-tuneful direction, becoming a single soprano entity made of fragments of sound sometimes accreting into perfectly imperfect lines. Two long tracks, "Full Scale" and "Relations," are completed by a final four-minute coda aptly titled "Twittering." Indeed, the whole program has the joyous interactivity of Paul Klee's painting "Twittering Machine," birds aligned on a line, proposing and picking up lines, nothing cruel or mean-spirited, free play all a graceful twitter. This CD reissue restores the original Tomas Schmit design from the initial release on SAJ Records. Licensed directly from FMP. Edition of 500.
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CVSD 086CD
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While Dredd Foole would stamp his legend as a foundational figure in the New Weird America free folk underground of the 1990s and 2000s, that is just the second half of the story. Forty years ago, in February 1982, Dredd entered the studio with Mission of Burma, stepping off a remarkable decade of post-punk activity that drew comparisons to The Stooges, Tim Buckley, and various outsider musicians. They would never tour and lacked ambition, so their powers were largely witnessed by a cloistered Boston scene. After an exhaustive approach in which hundreds of live, studio, home, and private performances have been located and reviewed over several years, Corbett Vs. Dempsey presents the first release in an ongoing series that will reconstruct the legacy known and the legacy damned of the most overlooked and under-documented American free rock unit, Dredd Foole and the Din. During an era of peak corporate control on popular music, when guitars were in the closet, improvisation was in retreat, and the flames of fire music were dimming, Dredd Foole and the Din emerged as part of a new underground kicking against the pricks, holding the line with the firmly clenched spirit of The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, and the newfound freedoms of the DIY post-punk landscape. Dredd's approach was radical even by the underground standards of the day: only the chords and some lyrics were predetermined, yet the songs were recorded in one take, without rehearsal. He sought to engineer maniacal and spiritually-frenzied bursts of raw aliveness. That this was achieved with such rock action is testament to the power of those involved. Until now, the only documentation of Dredd Foole and Mission of Burma's nearly two years of lowkey collaborative activity -- the celebrated band's sole collaboration during their initial incarnation -- was a two-song 7" single. Radically remixed/fully mixed from the original master tapes, remastered, and with the full cooperation of Dredd Foole and Mission of Burma, this first archival effort surfaces the entirety of that blistering studio session, growing it to near-album length and presenting a full picture of the Din's sound. The studio effort is balanced by a lo-fi selection of the project's astounding live debut from later that year, captured on cassette. Select live at the Channel 8/9/82, previously unreleased. Personnel: Dredd Foole - guitar, vocals; Roger Miller - organ, guitar; Clint Conley - guitar; Martin Swope - prepared bass; Peter Prescott - drums. Previously unpublished photographs by Pat Ireton. Produced and designed by Kris Price.
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CVSD 085CD
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Two masters of wind instruments blowing in from the Windy City. In 2003, as part of the seventh annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music, Joe McPhee and Evan Parker squared off for a round of intimate dialogues. The resulting recording is just the second time they had played as a duet, the previous also being in Chicago, at a studio in 1998, where the limited their instrumentarium to tenor saxophones, resulting in the Okka Disc classic Chicago Tenor Duets (2002). In this case, they expanded their arsenal to include tenor and soprano saxophones, as well as McPhee's trusty pocket cornet. Held in a beautiful hall at the Chicago Cultural Center, the concert was unforgettable. Fortunately, it was documented by the legendary mobile recordist Malachi Ritscher, who recorded most of the Bottle Fests with his usual rough-and-ready style. From the opening notes, Sweet Nothings was notable for the musicians' intuitive connection. Freely improvised in seven parts, these are duets of the highest caliber performed by two musicians who are constantly seeking common ground -- what you might call "agree-to-agree" improvisors. But there's no lack of tension or productive dissonance; on the contrary, that's part of their unity of vision, the shared ability to diverge and reconnect.
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CVSDS 004EP
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Chicago-based saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark was invited to arrange a set of '70s music for a concert in 2019, and among the pieces he chose were tracks by funk legends Parliament and post-punk iconoclasts DNA. On this 12-inch 45rpm EP, Vandermark's band Marker presents a unique take on "Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples", drawn from Parliament's 1975 LP Mothership Connection, and DNA's "Egomaniac's Kiss", which first appeared on the classic 1978 Brian Eno-produced collection No New York. Together with the entire Marker lineup, featuring Vandermark on reeds, Andrew Clinkman and Steve Marquette on electric guitars, Macie Stewart on keyboards, and Phil Sudderberg on drums, on this one-of-a-kind affair Marker invited Poughkeespie (New York) icon Joe McPhee to be the proverbial fly in the ointment. Applying the most unhinged version of his tenor saxophone stylings to the deep groove of George Clinton and out-James-Chancing the no wave thump of Arto Lindsay, Ikue Mori, and Robin Crutchfield, this rare disco-single-format free music release is one for your record player's auto-changer -- just hit repeat! Featuring design and artwork by Michael Dyer/Remake, uncompromisingly recorded by Alex Inglizian at Corbett vs. Dempsey's Chicago gallery, as direct to you as humanly possible.
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CVSDLP 002LP
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In the first years of its existence, starting in 1997, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet worked as a collective, inviting all and any of its participants to contribute compositions to the band's repertoire. Eventually, the Tentet would jettison scores and pre-planned structures altogether, opting for free improvisation, but on their early tours and initial recordings they played pieces written by the various band members. A marathon set of summer studio sessions in 2002, just off a US tour, yielded two CDs for Okka Disk, A Short Visit to Nowhere and Broken English. Of two Mars Williams compositions from the session, one was recorded but never issued... until now. Featuring the original line-up of the band, which combined seven stellar Chicagoans -- Williams, Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kent Kessler, Michael Zerang, and Hamid Drake -- with Mats Gustafsson, Joe McPhee, and the band's namesake, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet was a sensationally versatile free music ensemble, capable of going into all sorts of unexpected territory. The group sports a four-saxophone frontline, with twin trombones (McPhee is on valve trombone here), two strings, and a ferocious drum section featuring Zerang and Drake, who had already worked together intimately for more than 25 years at this point. Recently rediscovered in his vaults by Williams, newly mixed by original engineer John McCortney, Ultraman vs. Alien Metron is a lost classic of improvised music by one of the premier improvised music bands of its era. With preposterous juxtapositions of mood, from monstrous lurching heavy rock (underpinning the Japanese Godzilla-esque theme) to hard-swinging free bop and even an incredibly delicate, poignant ballad section, this feature-length track (18+ minutes) is chock full of rock 'em sock 'em goodness. For its maiden voyage on vinyl, Corbett vs. Dempsey has prepared a special package, with artwork and design by Brötzmann, a one-sided LP, the other side featuring a silkscreened work by Brötzmann.
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CVSD 081CD
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Joe McPhee's response to the challenge of making a new CD of solo music during COVID was to go at it head on, to address the present in its starkest aspects, to reach for comfort in the music of great composers, and to speak directly to the virus in no uncertain terms. The result is unlike any other of McPhee's many records, a variety show of improvisations, favorite compositions, field recording, multi-tracking, incantation and recitation. After searching for the right studio-like setting with an ideal sound, but hampered by the restrictions of quarantine, he abandoned such hope and dug out a clothes closet in his Poughkeepsie house, where he could approach the task with an unconventional intimacy. In the dead of night, McPhee played luscious versions of compositions by Carla Bley and Charles Mingus, extrapolating on their melodies, even singing a Joni Mitchell lyric to Mingus's "Goodbye Porkpie Hat". Elsewhere he plays harrowing tenor saxophone improvisations, a plaintive tone entering his melancholic melodic sensibility. On the title track, McPhee layers a dozen aching blues lines atop a field recording of the namesake highway, and in another piece he discovers an entire drum choir in the noise of dripping water on a tin plate in his sink, something he dedicates to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death was announced moments before he noticed the environmental sound. On one of several very short, intense tracks, McPhee literally attempts to reverse the virus by intoning a spell-like chant: "Out, damned bug/Out, damned bug!" The package includes extensive track-by-track liner notes and a poem by McPhee, with artwork and design by Christopher Wool.
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CVSD 080CD
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With his riveting performance in the inaugural Sequesterfest online festival in April 2020, Ken Vandermark inspired the Black Cross Solo Sessions. Already in the early days of lockdown, making good on the promise -- or threat -- of protracted off-road time, Vandermark had dedicated himself to the creation of a new book of works for solo reed instruments, which he debuted that day. The result of this watershed moment for the Chicago-based improvisor and composer was a body of works that reassert his seriousness and test his ability to reflect and reevaluate. The compositions, which are platforms for invention, are dealt with in relatively economical, almost stripped-down fashion, ringing with a kind of bell-like clarity and focus. Most tracks are on the shorter side, straight to the point, featuring the rippling intensity that is a Vandermark hallmark, but with an altogether reborn sense of purpose. Pieces are dedicated to filmmakers, photographers, and painters, musicians, choreographers, and writers, pointing outward from the hermetic situation of the pandemic to a network of creative icons. Recorded at home in the detailed chamber sonics of his living room, they offer a bulwark against adversity -- the triumph of an endlessly questing mind over the terror of enforced stasis. Liner notes by Vandermark, cover art and design by Christopher Wool.
Corbett vs. Dempsey on Black Cross Solo Sessions: "In our lifetime. We hear this phrase repeated often these days. About things we have never experienced. The sense of global isolation imposed by COVID-19 has literally given us pause, required reflection on something unique in our lifetime. Musicians have been particularly hard hit by the virus, its travel bans and supply chain clogs. They faced an exaggerated number of unfamiliar conditions, many of them adverse, some of them career threatening and anxiety provoking. All of a sudden, players who were accustomed to the constant refreshment of different partners in shifting circumstances found themselves alone at home. But... what better time, we thought, to make a solo record? A production collaboration between artist Christopher Wool and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Black Cross Solo Sessions culminates in eight individual responses to the predicament of creative music during this unprecedented moment in our lifetime. All of the BCSS packages feature artwork by Wool, a distinctive black cross image that has been a part of some of his work since the outset of the pandemic, in this case decisively laid atop images of his paintings. The musicians have worked under a range of conditions, recording where possible -- at home, out in the world, or in the studio -- and each release has its own backstory, a highly contingent tale that speaks to the adaptability of creative musicians, their resilience and power in the face of a devastating obstacle. A personal statement. A singular response. The solo record is a special challenge. Nowhere to hide, no place to run."
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CVSD 084CD
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At a time before COVID, Brazilian singer/songwriter/producer Moreno Veloso began singing his children to sleep. After the virus set in, this habit took on added significance, a father's reassurance. The music he chose for these nocturnes was drawn from friends and heroes, a selection of beautiful tunes and lyrics that began to form itself into a songbook of sorts, and Veloso started recording these pieces after the kids were tucked in. Gently surrounded by the night sounds outside his apartment, working very directly and on his own, he crafted a group of these lullabies into a CD that is at once soothing and haunting, the deep sense of emotionality and fragility countered with buoyancy and optimism. Veloso, who is part of the royal family of Brazilian music, has an angelic voice, his phrasing effortless and light. Here, with nothing but guitar and vocals, his musicianship shines especially brightly; the program moves along with absolute conviction, one song abutting another as if it was inevitable, nothing else could work, the sequence begging for repeat listens. This is a first for Veloso, who has almost never recorded anyone else's music -- on Every Single Night he covers songs by or associated with his father Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa (Moreno's godmother), Nelson Angelo, the rock group Barão Vermelho, Lulu Santos, Augustin Lara, a classic samba and a surprise bonus track from Snow White. Extensive track-by-track liner notes by Veloso, a photo of the cozy spot he recorded the songs, and artwork and design by Christopher Wool.
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CVSD 082CD
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Okkyung Lee's is perhaps the most harrowing of the Black Cross Solo Sessions stories. At the onset of COVID, the cellist was called to travel to Korea to be with her dying father. The trip was sudden and didn't allow her to bring her instrument, but once there she was unable to return to New York because of the stringent lockdown. For months she was stranded without her cello, unable to practice or make any music. This intense alienation took a long time to lift. Indeed, even after she made it back to the States, Lee found it impossible to reconnect with the music for a period. The invitation to make a new solo CD for BCSS inspired her to jump-start her playing and in the process, she has made one of the most profound and beautiful CDs in recent memory, an almost impossible to describe amalgam of string and wood and voice and magic. Lee does not release many records, so each one is a major event. A stunning studio production, Na-Reul is that and more, its nine tracks, as Lee puts it, a "raw and direct" response to the traumatic events of 2020 and the turbulent emotions that accompanied it. With liner notes by the artist and artwork and design by Christopher Wool.
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CVSD 077CD
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A grand reunion of sorts in Berlin on the first day of November, 1996. Under the auspices of Free Music Production, Cecil Taylor, the great pianist and one of the premier musical minds of the 20th century, joined forces with his early comrade, drummer Sunny Murray, for a set of improvised duets. Murray was part of Taylor's important groups starting in 1959, including the trio with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, with which Taylor toured Europe in 1962 and 1963, recording the seminal Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come and Live at the Café Montmartre. On the latter tour, Murray met Albert Ayler when the saxophonist joined Taylor's group for some concerts; they would go on to record one of the greatest free jazz records in history, Ayler's Spiritual Unity (ESPDISK 1002CD/LP). Thirty-six years later, they were back together and better than ever. Never to do things a straightforward manner, Taylor began the concert by inviting eight members of his band to kick things off with an intonation choir, the master himself leading the sound poetry incantation. Taylor and Murray then moved into a 48-minute exchange of energies, peaks and valleys of expressive intensity rolling along, the two veteran improvisors slipping back into sync as if the decades had simply vanished. This extraordinary music has never been publicly released on CD. Gorgeously recorded, with action photos by Dagmar Gebers and a cover painting by Jacqueline Humphries, the music is released under license from FMP. And yes, the title was all Taylor's, as if he knew his music would be released during a virus of the same name.
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CVSD 079CD
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Danish pianist Tom Prehn was one of the first Europeans to deeply explore free music. With his quartet featuring Fritz Krogh on tenor saxophone, Poul Ehlers on bass, and Finn Slumstrup on drums, Prehn recorded Axiom in October, 1963, for Sonet, though it went unreleased until 2015 because the band felt that their music had moved beyond it already. To hear the music they were talking about, one could only turn to two privately-made reel-to-reel tapes, Centrifuga and Sohlverv, recorded in August, 1964, and January, 1965, respectively. Both sessions took place under casual circumstances at Prehn's summer cottage outside Aarhus, but the music was dead serious -- some of the most adventurous improvising yet made by a group on the continent. These tapes have been the stuff of legend. Only a couple copies of them exist, and they're spoken of in hushed tones by folks in the know, most of whom have never heard what they sound like. The earlier recording, which consists of a single magnificent 44-minute track, is one of the group's free jazz pinnacles, with Slumstrup featured as a soloist, playing in top form, with the band building structures around his propulsive and sensitive kit-work. On Sohlverv, which translates as "solstice," the band enters completely unknown terrain, working through a series of four sections with solos featured by each bandmember. Here Krogh reveals his incredible force as an idea generator. As Mats Gustafsson says in his liner notes: "Close-miked percussive sax-pad treatments that swing like mad and give the music a VERY radical profile and color. I have NEVER heard anything like it." This reissue is the product of a long process, working Prehn and with the generous and patient Center for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research. Mastered directly from the original reels, with notes by Gustafsson and facsimile reproductions of both tape covers. Never reissued in any form until now. Seriously, as the old adage goes, this is music that needs to be heard to be believed.
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CVSD 078CD
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Two historical heavyweights of European free music, clarinetist Rüdiger Carl and drummer Sven-Åke Johansson, join forces with younger bassist Joel Grip for a night of incredible trios. Recorded a few months before the pandemic clampdown, in November of 2019, at Berlin's Au Topsi Pohl, the music is exploratory and swinging, with Carl's viscous clarinet and a brilliant rhythm team steeped in time-based feel but loose and sometimes ambling. Johansson was part of the first Peter Brötzmann Trio to commit music to wax, on For Adolphe Sax (BRÖ/FMP, 1967), and he was on the legendary Brötzmann Octet date Machine Gun (BRÖ/FMP, 1968); the drummer's 1972 solo outing Schlingerland kicked off the SAJ sub-label of FMP, so named for Johansson's initials, and he has made a slew of great records for his own label, also called SÅJ. Playing tenor saxophone, Carl led a fiery group called Rüdiger Carl Inc., which recorded the classic King Alcohol (FMP, 1972); he was part of legendary groups with pianist Irene Schweizer, also playing clarinet and accordion, and has recorded with many of the leading improvisors in Europe. Johansson and Carl have recorded together numerous times, including Fünfunddreissigvierzig (FMP, 1986) and Djungelmusik met Sång (Hapna, 2000). This sparkling live set features three longer pieces, beautifully recorded, with a cover photo by Johansson and liner notes by Peter Margasak. Personnel: Rüdiger Carl - clarinet; Joel Grip - double bass; Sven-Åke Johansson - drums.
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LP
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CVSDLP 001LP
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As well as being a return to public programming, this live event is also a record launch for The Mystery J, Corbett Vs. Dempsey's new vinyl LP which features improvised music by Joe McPhee, violist Jen Clare Paulson, and Brian Labycz on electronics. Recorded in 2014 at Okka Fest 6 in Milwaukee, it contains some of the most bristling trumpet work ever heard from McPhee's lips, in a super-responsive, sometimes uncommonly quiet musical context. Another side of the master improviser -- subtle dialogue with two younger maestros. Taking its title from the rum-running yacht on which McPhee's father sailed from Nassau to Miami, The Mystery J is CvsD's inaugural long-playing vinyl. Pressed in Chicago at Smashed Plastic and featuring a design with artwork by one of the original Chicago imagists, Richard Wetzel. You will be morose when you have missed your chance to spin it on your own home table, so as McPhee says don't postpone joy! Edition of 500.
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