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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$24.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/18/2025
Archaic, infernal, radical, consistent, courageous. Following the release of his LP The Lovers And Destroyers with Caspar Brötzmann Bass Totem in autumn, 2024, renowned guitarist Caspar Brötzmann and his band Caspar Brötzmann Massaker present a collaborative release between Corbett vs. Dempsey and Exile On Mainstream (Berlin). The record features two different live versions of "All This Violence," recorded in Vienna and Dresden, with Saskia von Klitzing (drums) and Eduardo Delgado Lopez (bass). Founded in 1986, Caspar Brötzmann Massaker became a significant force in the 1990s alternative rock scene. The band's albums The Tribe (1987), Black Axis (1989), Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore (1991), Koksofen (1993), Home (1995) and Mute Massaker (1999) are heralded underground classics, having a profound influence on bands and artists like Sonic Youth, SUNN O))), Faith No More, Neurosis, Sumac, and Helmet, to name a few. The band's music is textural, visceral, arresting, and urgent, marked by repetitive, hypnotic intensity, and Brötzmann's signature guitar sound. The legacy lies in his fearless experimentation, dissolving boundaries between classical music structures and amplified instrumentation in rock music. Since the mid-1980s, Caspar Brötzmann has been shaping an unmistakable sound -- infernal, radical, uncompromising. He unwaveringly pursues his own path, beyond clear genre boundaries. As the son of a famous saxophonist, he found his artistic identity early on and developed a unique sound language that discharges in brute catharsis. His music is not an adaptation to trends, but a sensitive, passionate, almost obsessive approach to despair and anger -- and yet full of hope. With his virtuoso independence on the instrument, he is an exceptional phenomenon. An atonal Hendrix, made in Germany.
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CVSD 119CD
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$13.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/11/2025
Corbett vs. Dempsey presents the release of PRO FAKE NO REJECT by pianist Erez Dessel. This is Dessel's first solo CD. One of the most astonishing young musicians to emerge in contemporary improvised music, Erez Dessel (b. 1998) is helping to revitalize the practice. An ace technician who studied at the New England Conservatory, Dessel is in no way conservative. Indeed, his bracing approach to the keyboard and deeply intuitive sense of form can be explosive, uncorked energy summoning references to Cecil Taylor and the Don Pullen/Milford Graves duets, and an almost Russian Romantic darkness -- imagine an improvised Mussorgsky -- offset by keen emotional intelligence, with joyful melodicism and an airborne quality. And nestled within Dessel's playing there's a perverse streak, a contrarianism that might call to mind Misha Mengelberg or Jim Baker. An active participant in Chicago's current creative music scene.
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CVSD 117CD
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Corbett vs. Dempsey presents this joint release with Thanatosis Records (Stockholm), the second record by the quartet Das B. The lineup features Maya Magdas on piano, Mazen Kerbaj on trumpet, Mike Majowski on bass, and Tony Buck on drums. Taking structural and dynamic cues from the classic John Coltrane record A Love Supreme, Das B totally reinvents the music, and in the process meticulously subverts the notion of the tribute or songbook. Available on both CD and LP, in strictly limited editions.
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CVSD 117LP
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LP version. Corbett vs. Dempsey presents this joint release with Thanatosis Records (Stockholm), the second record by the quartet Das B. The lineup features Maya Magdas on piano, Mazen Kerbaj on trumpet, Mike Majowski on bass, and Tony Buck on drums. Taking structural and dynamic cues from the classic John Coltrane record A Love Supreme, Das B totally reinvents the music, and in the process meticulously subverts the notion of the tribute or songbook. Available on both CD and LP, in strictly limited editions.
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CVSD 122CD
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Corbett vs. Dempsey presents the release of the self-titled debut CD by the international quartet The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. The highly democratic foursome works in the productive netherworld between genres, where genres go to die. Integrating noise, jazz, electronic music, and pure mania, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters does not sit passively waiting for something to happen; in highly focused free improvisations, they take the proverbial bull by the horns with tempestuous throwdowns that have both a sense of abandon and an innate order. Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen singes the proceedings with bursts of alto while Anglo-Iranian turntablist Mariam Rezaei constructs a startling architecture with pioneering artistry. Italian piccolo trumpeter Gabriele Mitelli doubles on an array of electronics, and Austrian drummer Lukas König propels everything with propane power. Who are the monsters that the mind produces in its dormant state? The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters ponders the question by means of sound and spontaneity, as Goya did with his incisive etchings. Like a defibrillator, they place paddles on the chest and give it a jolt, nine jolts in nine tracks, hoping to revive our moribund consciousness. Awaken the creative impulse, they urge us, or suffer the consequence.
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CVSD 118CD
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Corbett vs. Dempsey presents Jaap Blonk's Ursonate, featuring the complete text-sound work by artist Kurt Schwitters. Blonk first recorded the canonical Dada poetry piece in 1986, released as an LP on BVHAAST, Willem Breuker's label. He has returned to the work multiple times over the ensuing decades, and this incredible new recording shows his deepening understanding of the pioneering work. Blonk writes in the liner notes: "Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) wrote his Ursonate or Sonate in Urlauten ('Primordial Sonata' or 'Sonata in Primordial Sounds') over ten years, from 1922 to 1932. During that period Schwitters tried out many preliminary parts in public poetry readings. It became a 30-page work in invented words, which he later considered one of his two masterpieces (the other being the Merzbau in his house in Hannover, destroyed in 1944). The Ursonate has a structure similar to that of a classical sonata or symphony. It consists of four movements: 'Erster Teil' ('first part'), 'Largo,' 'Scherzo,' and 'Presto.' After a short introduction, the first movement opens with an exposition of its four main themes (subjects), each of which is subsequently 'developed' (development in the sense it is used in classical sonata form), leading to a coda. It is note- worthy that the theme exposition returns as a reprise before each new development but the last one. Both the Largo and the Scherzo have a centered (A-B-A) construction in which the middle part contrasts with the two identical outer parts. The Presto has a strict rhythm broken only by a few interjections from the first movement and the Scherzo. Like the first movement, it follows the sonata form: exposition (repeated immediately in this case), development, and recapitulation. Next is the Kadenz, leaving the reciter free to choose between the written version and his own. However, in his written instructions for future performers of the piece, Schwitters says that he wrote his cadenza only for those among them who 'had no imagination.' In my performances of the Ursonate, I always create an improvised cadenza on the basis of the sonata's thematic material. Only on the recordings I have issued, for reasons of completeness, a recording of the written cadenza is included as a separate track." --Jaap Blonk, December 2024
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CVSDLP 013LP
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Music Is A Message From Space is a bracing nine-track LP featuring new and archival recordings, all orbiting around the intergalactic soundscape introduced by Sun Ra. Ra's own acapella track "I Don't Believe in Love," recorded by Ra at home in Chicago during the 1950s, kicks the program off. This intimate private recording is followed by two intense new solo improvisations by French guitarist Raymond "Moncho" Boni, one acoustic and one electric, inspired by seeing the Arkestra preparing for a gig in Arles in 1976. The first side wraps up with Jason Adasiewicz's riveting unaccompanied vibraphone workout on Ra's "Lanquidity" and "Where Pathways Meet," both compositions from the LP Lanquidity. With a completely different take on Lanquidity, side two begins with four wild remixes by legendary Cologne techno pioneer Wolfgang Voigt, using layered samples from the record. Hailing from the intersection of free jazz and out rock, Ken Vandermark's band Spaceways Inc., with bassist Nate McBride and drummer Hamid Drake, continue with a medley of two Ra tunes ("We Travel the Spaceways" and "Space is the Place"), in collaboration with the Italian band Zu. And where the program started in disbelief, love-skepticism, it concludes with Joe McPhee's emphatic loving embrace on "Cosmic Love," a classic tenor/synth sound-on-sound recording from 1970. In its breadth, Music is a Message From Space revels in the omnidirectionality of Ra's influence. The vinyl is strictly limited to 500 copies and features cover art by Emil Schult, who designed classic 1970s LPs for Kraftwerk. The record's inner sleeve reproduces the artworks in Nothing Is: Sun Ra and Other's Covers, a show curated by John Corbett and Albert Oehlen for JUBG in Cologne and CvsD in Chicago, serving as a full-color commemoration of that recent exhibition.
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CVSD 115CD
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It's a miracle that some records ever get made. Right in the middle of Ceausescu's ultra-repressive dictatorship, composer Iancu Dumitrescu managed to arrange for his first LP, a compilation of radical new music by Dumitrescu and three of his Romanian colleagues, all older than him: Ocavian Nemescu, Stefan Niculescu, and Corneliu Cezar. Dumitrescu was -- and remains -- one of the most iconoclastic figures in contemporary music. Often referred to as a spectralist (though he distances himself from the approach taken by the French spectralists) and self-described as an adherent of "acousmatic" music (though again he situates himself at a remove from the French electroacoustic composers) and highly influenced by deep studies in phenomenology, Dumitrescu's music often focuses intensely on one sonorous object, penetrating it until it is entirely blown open. He formed Ansamblul Hyperion, a chamber group featuring adventurous young musicians, in 1976. Four years later, against all odds, in a radio studio in Bucharest, they recorded this groundbreaking compilation for Electrecord, the state record company. The program starts with one of Dumitrescu's most important works, the breathtaking, string-centric "Movemur et Sumus" (1978), translated from the Latin as "move and exist." Nemescu's "Combinatii In Cercuri" (1965) was composed for the ensemble together with an electronic component that was added to the piece in 1980. Composed in 1979, Niculescu's "Sincronie" features Dumitrescu himself on piano, as well as conducting, as he does on all the works; written for an indeterminate number of performers between two and twelve (here featuring nine) it utilizes fixed elements in the score together with openly improvised elements, expanding from a core vibraphone part to encompass an almost ecstatic meditation on stasis and motion. Cezar's work "Rota" (1976) combines Romanian, Balkan, and other Eastern melodic resonances with electronics (some of them startlingly video-game-like) and preparations on various instruments, lending an ear to the natural sounds of wind, waves, and seagull calls. This historically charged document, released in 1981 in Romania and available for the most part only there, has never been reissued in any form. Gorgeously remastered from the original tapes, it appears here with its original cover design.
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CVSD 112CD
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Corbett vs. Dempsey presents And Yeah So (1981-1985), the first ever compilation by Splat! Emerging amid the primo froth of the British post-punk era, Splat!'s lineup included vocalist Dave Parsons, the mastermind behind Ron Johnson Records. The band released its only 7-inch single as the label's maiden record, going on to follow up with a 12-inch EP. These (plus one track on a compilation) were the sum total official output, but the band was active and made loads of fantastic, high-octane, often hilarious and off-kilter recordings, the best of which are collected here, together with their full discography, and made available on CD for the first time. Nineteen tracks that give truth to the title "Jugular Blowjob," a heavy heap of blessed mess that kicks the whole comp off. Dave Parsons tells the full Splat! story: "Splat! were four, sometimes five, misfits from a small town halfway between Nottingham and Derby in the middle of England. Influenced by the likes of the Pop Group, PiL, The Fall, and the Birthday Party but also by all the punk stuff that they had experienced when they were fifteen years old or so. The band played mainly in the local area and got a good reputation for messy live shows that often ended in blood and tears (and some sweat). The band was around in 1982 -- after some pre-incarnations in 1980 and 1981 -- Paul Walker, drums (17 years old), Dave Parsons, voice (19 years old), John Allsopp, guitar (19 years old), Mark Grebby (bass, 20 years old) was the main lineup. A single was recorded at Cargo Studios. The first Splat! single did okay -- it sold most of its pressing of 1000 -- there was an interview in Sounds and John Peel played it a couple of times and plans went ahead for the second release. The 12" EP (RON2) came out in 1984 and did much the same. Soon after that the band split up, with some recorded but unreleased material (some of which is here for the first time in physical form). Dave continued Ron Johnson and the label had considerable artistic/critical success from 1984 to 1988 with Big Flame, A Witness, Stump, the Shrubs, MacKenzies, The Ex, etc. gaining the label a reputation for angular post-Beefheartian guitar noise-pop.
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CVSD 126BK
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Restocked. In Straight Up, Without Wings, Joe McPhee surveys sixty years in creative music. Starting with his trumpeter-father's influence and formative years in the U.S. Army, McPhee recounts experiences as a Black-hippy-cum-budding-musician based in upstate New York, perched at an ideal distance from Manhattan's free jazz demimonde of the 1960s and its loft scene of the 1970s. A natural storyteller, revealing never-told tales and reveling in the joys of noise, McPhee puts the influence of -- and encounters with -- Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler into the context of an independently-minded young player, ravenous for experience, dealing with the crucible of racism, seeking to break out beyond the bounds of a regional Hudson Valley scene that he knows like the back of his hand. The memoir draws forward through thrilling passages in Europe and across the United States, as McPhee gains momentum, as his music becomes the impetus for multiple record labels, as he collaborates with figures from Peter Brötzmann to Pauline Oliveros, and as he eventually goes on to inspire musicians far and wide. Written as an oral history, deftly conducted by Mike Faloon to preserve McPhee's unique narrative voice, Straight Up, Without Wings includes "reflections" by eight musicians from across the protagonist's rich history. Photography: Ziga Koritnik, Ken Brunton, John Corbett. First printing, edition of 1000. 166 pages. Dimensions: 8.5" x 6" x .5".
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CVSDLP 011LP
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Corbett vs. Dempsey and Studio Williams announce that Radio Play is available on long play vinyl for the first time. The double-disk set contains two adaptions of Inklusive. Inklusive is a play written by Bavarian playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz. It is part of a trilogy of radio plays from 1971 titled Trilogie Münchener Lebens. The play was first broadcast as a radio play in former West Germany on Südwestfunk in 1972. A second version was broadcast in former East Germany on Rundfunk der DDR in 1974. The West and East German broadcasts are the basis for two radio play adaptations by artist Christopher Williams. Both adaptations will be recorded in German using the same technology used to produce the original broadcasts of 1972 and 1974. Eva Mattes (O.k., The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) is an actress born in Tegernsee. Sebastian Bezzel (Tatort, Eberhoferkrimis) is an actor from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Norbert Stöß (Abschnitt 40) is an actor born in Dresden. Andreas Leupold (The Human Centipede) is an actor from East Berlin. Rüdiger Carl is a free jazz artist born in Goldap, East Prussia. Mo Stern is a sound engineer, visual artist, DJ and music producer born in Hamburg. Franz Xaver Kroetz is a playwright, actor, and director from Munich. Christopher Williams is a Los Angeles-born artist and professor of photography who lives and works in Cologne. Maximilian Klemens Sänger is an artist and filmmaker based in Düsseldorf. Packaged in cardboard sleeve with paper insert. Produced and directed by Christopher Williams; executive production by: John Corbett & Jim Dempsey. Edition of 500.
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CVSD 116CD
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Until now, the earliest recordings anyone has heard by Joe McPhee come from the period around his 1968 debut album, Underground Railroad. McPhee had just started playing tenor saxophone at that point. A couple of years earlier, the bassist featured on all of McPhee's early recordings, Tyrone Crabb, led a band of his own, the Jazzmen, in which McPhee was featured on his first instrument: trumpet. Indeed, McPhee was a trumpet legacy -- his father was a trumpeter. In the mid-'60s, Joe was a serious young player with deep knowledge and an expansive ear. Performing around Poughkeepsie and across the Hudson Valley, the Jazzmen were one of the very first ensembles recorded by Craig Johnson, who would go on to form the CjR label expressly to release McPhee's music. The fledgling audio engineer was clearly learning the ropes when he documented this incredible 1966 performance, but despite a few excusable acoustic blemishes, it's a beautiful window into McPhee's trumpet playing, suggesting that, had he stuck to that instrument alone, he might well have been considered a major figure on the horn (of course, he is such a figure on the pocket trumpet); the opening track, a version of "One Mint Julep" as arranged by Freddie Hubbard (on his Blue Note record Open Sesame) shows McPhee's lithe stylings to good effect. McPhee's musical cosmology was much bigger than a single axe, however, as is evident on the sprawling second track, which, over the course of half-an-hour proceeds from an excoriating yowl to a version of Miles Davis's "Milestones" taken at a sweltering tempo. A portent of the free jazz to follow and a marker of McPhee's foundations in hard bop and soul jazz, 1966 features the entire reel-to-reel tape long thought lost, simply labeled: "Joe McPhee, 1966, trumpet." Featuring Joe McPhee (trumpet, recorder), Harry Hall (tenor saxophone, recorder), Reggie Marks (tenor saxophone, recorder), Mike Kull (piano), Tyrone Crabb (bass, bandleader), and Charlie Benjamin (drums).
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CVSD 113CD
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The beginning of the 1970s was a watershed moment in the terrestrial life of Sun Ra. With his band, the Arkestra, he began touring internationally. He and his manager Alton Abraham penned a deal with ABC-Impulse! for a series of records which introduced him to many new and distant listeners, as did his Blue Thumb LP Space is the Place. The film of the same name was under way in northern California at the time, too, and Ra accepted a lectureship at University of California, Berkeley, in 1971, teaching a class titled "The Black Man and the Cosmos." This course of study was held in some secrecy, apparently open exclusively to Black students who were strictly forbidden to record the lectures. Ra's assistants did, however, document the sessions, and some of these recordings have made their way to YouTube. The incredible half-hour of Berkeley Lecture presented here, however, is previously unknown, extracted from the Creative Audio Archive's extensive holdings. It presents Ra walking his students through a series of wonderful paradoxes and riddles, the sound of his chalk on the chalkboard serving as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on or complementing his highly creative pedagogy. At the end of the lecture, Ra performs two musical demonstrations, the first a piano version of the Arkestra classic "Love in Outer Space," followed by a blistering 16-minute solo on the Moog synthesizer. Available for the first time ever, with cover images of the original tape box and reel featuring Ra's annotations. Transfer by Todd Carter. Mastering by Matt Mehlan. Original tape box and reel from CAA. CD designed by David Khan-Giordano. Produced by John Corbett.
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CVSD 111CD
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Two brilliant improvisers, two distinct generations, one close-listening encounter. Swedish guitarist (and, elsewhere, banjo player) Niklas Fite brings a flinty intimacy to his playing, a dry punch that reminds us that the guitar is a percussion instrument. One of the great figures in European improvised music, based in Hannover, Germany, Günter Christmann gained notoriety as a trombonist starting in the very early 1970s, but he was equally engaged in playing double bass and cello and has in recent years devoted himself mainly to the latter. On insisting, Christmann plays cello exclusively. Together, on eight tracks, the two players delve deeply into their collective sound spectrum, exploring timbre and timing, dynamics and dissonance. Like the different iterations of Christmann's variable ensemble Vario (one of which CvsD has documented on the CD Vario 34-3), this is music with intensity and integrity, hardcore improvised music, action-packed minute gestures concentrated within a sweeping overall field of sound and energy. Recorded over two days in 2019.
A statement from Niklas Fite: "the breath is of essential importance in great music. music that never gives that moment of exhalation -- of relief -- suffocates the listener. on the other hand: music that only exhales will also suffocate the listener. the inhalation -- the buildup of energy -- and the exhalation -- the release -- is the game we want to play. and perhaps more importantly: the correct timing of these, which can never be calculated or analyzed, but only felt. a third, and very important aspect of breath in music is the holding of the breath. to freeze in suspense, in anticipation of what will come, and in reflection of that which has been. these are sensations that can be felt in great music, but the truth of the music is far more complex than what I so far have described, and probably more complex than anyone can describe."
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CVSD 110CD
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British percussionist Tony Oxley returned to his piece "Angular Apron" multiple times after debuting it in the early 1970s. Drawing equally on his interest in contemporary composed music by folks like Xenakis and Ligeti and on his long tenure as one of the central figures in European improvised music, Oxley assembled a quintet to play the work in Bochum, Germany, in 1992. The one-time ensemble consisted of five players from varied backgrounds. Trumpeter and flugelhornist Manfred Schoof, who delivers one of his last performances before turning exclusively to composition, is one of the pioneers of free music in Germany, a somewhat understated figure of immense power and authority whose 1969 FMP LP European Echoes stands as one of the great documents of orchestral improvisation, and whose own quintet helped define the transitional forms of new jazz a few years earlier in the decade. American bassist Sirone is best known for his work in the Revolutionary Ensemble, with violinist Leroy Jenkins and drummer Jerome Cooper. Sirone's presence in Oxley's group confirms the drummer's commitment to a transatlantic aesthetic, one he explored extensively with Cecil Taylor and William Parker in the Feel Trio. Saxophonist Larry Stabbins brings his incredible versatility to the band, adding the mix of ferocity and buoyancy that he added to diverse projects from Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Peter Brötzmann to Weekend and Working Week. On piano and electronics, Pat Thomas was at the time a relative newcomer to the British scene, rapidly becoming one of its leading lights and most sought-after collaborators. Oxley drew on this crew's wide range of orientations for this "Angular Apron," exploiting their extremes of timbre and register, calling on their acuity as listeners, and prodding them with his finely-honed junkshop of metal percussion, with which he detonates the hour-long piece. Presenting the never-before-released music in its complete glory, mastered from the original tapes, the Angular Apron CD design features images of two of Oxley's paintings. Recorded October 2, 1992, at the Ruhr Jazz Festival, Bochum, Germany. Mastered by Larry Stabbins. Design by David Khan-Giordano. Produced by John Corbett. Thanks to Tutta Oxley.
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CVSD 108CD
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Kyosaku is a trio. Guitarist Finn Loxbo. Electric bassist Else Bergman. Drummer Ryan Packard. They are based in Stockholm. Together, they explore intensive plateaus. States of constant ecstasy. Kyosaku's music has been described as relentless. But it's really a combination of mesmerizing and prodding, the name a reference to Zen Buddhist "encouragement stick," used to rouse dozy meditators. Packard says: "Relentless as a conceptual place to live within. To be wide awake, relentlessly. To use a full peripheral vision and accept the full spectrum of color. To saturate. To stay within and grow deeper into the details of density, of a shared cohesive spirit. Endless variations under a common cause of stasis." With full-on heavy-hitting sound, this might seem to forecast a brutal listen, but on their second outing, Kyosaku, the band drills deep into detail, the buoyant music gradually shifting while maintaining its ferocity, in a way inviting comparison with Kommun, another group with Loxbo and Packard (also Lisa Ullén and Vilhelm Bromander) in which they explore the opposite end of the dynamic spectrum, also with an intensity and constancy. On the CD's two longform tracks, the music comes with influences hidden and explicit, from Mahavishnu Orchestra to Melt Banana, but it's entirely original, featuring the sum creative energies of its three potent parts, sustained groove serving the purpose of raising the intensity bar. Packard again: "We have collectively agreed upon the idea that under no circumstances should you let up. We propose this question to ourselves before we play: If you start with max intensity, is there more room to go? How does one collectively sustain at such a high intensity, volume? Where is your focus?" For the listener, focal point is also the point. Are you listening? How closely? How does your attention shift? What do you notice in the sound, in the manner of articulation, in the variations and the repetitions? And what are the joys of listening so closely to something so powerful? Like putting your hand on the ribcage of a sleeping tiger. Recorded by Christopher Roth at Studio Dubious, November 23-24, 2022. Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug. Photo by Daniel Piaggio Strandlund.
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CVSD 109CD
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Joe McPhee is one of the great multi-instrumentalists of contemporary improvised music. His instrumental battery has included saxophones, clarinets, valve trombone, pocket trumpet, sound-on-sound tape recorder, and space organ, but another arrow in his quiver is text. McPhee has been writing poems since the 1970s. He occasionally introduces one into performance, as an introduction or afterword to music, and in recent years he's been known to do full-on readings, text only, featuring his inimitable sense of dramatic timing intoned in his rich voice. The poems range from the observational to the political to the surreal. They're composed in rhyme or according to an internal rhythm, sometimes utterly prosaic, sometimes fantastic and flamboyant. A few of them capture the immediacy of improvised music more acutely than any critical writing on the subject, his half-century immersion in the craft of free music having given him a bottomless cup to draw on and his sensitivity to the nuances of language providing a host of palpable metaphors and metonyms, similes and strophes. The poems are marvels on the page, but they really take flight in McPhee's mouth. In 2021, during a flurry of pandemic-inspired poetic activity, he traveled to Chicago expressly to record a program of his poems. For the studio date, he invited saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark to play duets as interludes between groupings of the poems. Then Vandermark, engineer Alex Inglizian, and the CvsD team sat breathless in the Experimental Sound Studio control room as McPhee proceeded to perform his poetry nonstop and without repetition for nearly two hours. The result is Musings of a Bahamian Son, the first full-length release dedicated to McPhee's writing, with 27 poems interspersed with nine musical interludes and a postlude.
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CVSD 105CD
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At the tail end of 1996, saxophonist Mars Williams and drummer Hamid Drake took the tall corner stage at Chicago's Empty Bottle for two sets of duets. The rock club had just started a weekly Jazz & Improvised Music Series, curated by Ken Vandemark and John Corbett, which would run for nearly a decade. This rare pairing brought together two pivotal figures in the city's creative music scene, both of whom had extensive experience in diverse areas of music, from the free jazz focus of this intimate encounter to Mars's stints in rock with the Waitresses and the Psychedelic Furs and Hamid's work in Mandingo Griot Society, playing in reggae house bands, and lending rhythms to hits by Herbie Hancock. As eclectic as these inputs were, in the deep souls of Williams and Drake they added to the players' burgeoning inventive resources, rather than urging the players to pastichery. In the venerable dialogical lineage of saxophone and drum kit, these two contemporary ninjas indeed invented their own approach, very different, for instance, from other such duo settings for Drake, like those with Fred Anderson, Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, or Ken Vandermark. Here, the fiery reed-work of Williams lends the concert a special urgency and punch, Drake's funk trap imbued with G-force, his cymbals ringing with nuance, his toms speaking like a whole West African drum choir. Williams responds to this positive energy with one of his most commanding performances, starting with his composition "The Worm" (written for Dennis Rodman of the Bulls), and continuing through a series of phenomenal improvisations. Released by CvsD as part of a series of archival Mars Williams CDs, hand selected by Williams shortly before his untimely death in 2023, I Know You Are But What Am I? goes on the record proclaiming the lasting power of Mars Williams, especially in the company of a master like Hamid Drake.
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CVSD 107CD
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When Mars Williams dove into his vault to excavate several recordings for a Mars Archive series on Corbett vs. Dempsey, he immediately landed on a concert date from a decade earlier. The event, recorded at Chicago's Elastic Arts Foundation in 2012, featured a trio with Williams on reed instruments, Darin Gray on bass, and Chris Corsano on drums. This configuration had already been highly enough estimated by Williams that he'd posted one set on Bandcamp, but he saved the other set for future release, and selected it to be the third CD in CvsD's archival suite. Gray is of course well known to creative music insiders for his work with Jim O'Rourke and Akira Sakata, and as half of On Fillmore (with Glenn Kotche, of Wilco fame); he's a massively resourceful player with keen ears. Corsano is one of the hardest working percussionists in improvised music who has played with everyone under the sun, among them Joe McPhee and Okkyung Lee. In this freely improvised context, the threesome works almost as a single organism, spinning sounds that develop organically and patiently. Dave Zuchowski documented the date in a gorgeous recording. This is creative music at an exceptionally high level, with no gimmicks or compromises. Taken together with the other episodes in the Mars Archive series, it helps paint a full some picture of the restless creativity that was embodied in Mars Williams.
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CVSD 106CD
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From a night of music in Holland that's become legendary among NRG Ensemble enthusiasts, Hold That Thought presents a blazing concert of the quintet's unique sound. With Mars Williams and Ken Vandermark on reeds, Kent Kessler and Brian Sandstrom on basses (the latter doubling on trumpet and electric guitar), and Steve Hunt on drums, this incarnation of the band was arguably its tightest and mightiest, taking the inspiration of founder Hal Russell (1926-1992) and running with it. All the way. The quirkiness and eccentricity of Russell's vision remained a lasting part of the fabric of NRG, but the level of discipline and craftsmanship achieved by this version of the combo is arguably taken to a whole other level. Working with original material, mostly by Williams and Vandermark, NRG Ensemble had its signature pugilistic feel, with lots of time changes and dynamic shifts, quick starts and hard stops. Williams certainly knew how to push up the energy/NRG with a strangulated solo or a sudden burst of beautiful melody; all his years in creative music, from time spent as Roscoe Mitchell's copyist to countless weeks on the road kicking ass with the Psychedelic Furs, led him to a core understanding that linked many kinds of noise-making -- rock, funk, soul, free jazz, squeaky-bonk improvised music. Those tributaries meet in NRG Ensemble, with his longstanding colleagues gathered to joyfully up the ante. Williams chose this beautiful recording as one of three archival tapes he wanted released as soon as possible, and he approached CvsD with the job of shepherding them into the world just before his tragically early death from cancer in November, 2023.
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CVSD 104CD
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For the first time, a compact version of Rob Mazurek's magisterial Exploding Star Orchestra -- Exploding Star Orchestra/Small Unit -- commits its music to CD. Recorded live at Corbett vs. Dempsey's Chicago gallery space in March, 2023, the six-piece band featured Mazurek on trumpet, Tomeka Reid on cello, Damon Locks on voice and electronics, Angélica Sánchez on Wurlitzer, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Chad Tayloron drums. Spectral Fiction consists of two tracks, the deeply exploratory "Equations of Love in Prismatic Waves of Color," clocking in at nearly 40-minutes, and the super-groovalistic 14-minutes of "Driftless" (a Mazurek-penned melody named after the Sam Gilliam exhibition in which the music took place and by which it was inspired). The musicians were already warmed up -- really hot at this point -- by a concert the night before, playing music from their great International Anthem LP Lightning Dreamers in the Sky Theater at Chicago's Adler Planetarium. With Locks's incantatory samples and momentum-staked poetry and Reid's incisive pizzicato and arco cello intonations, the band moves through a spectacular range of diverse colors and emotional zones, locking into rolling grooves and opening out onto fields of energy and sound. Often open and investigatory, it's a different side of Mazurek's vision from the eight previous Orchestra releases dating back to 2007, a lighter, more aerodynamic incarnation of the cosmic-conscious ensemble.
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CVSD 099CD
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Corbett Vs. Dempsey presents the third 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. After his miraculous two-year collaboration with Mission of Burma came to an end, Dredd Foole found a full-time band -- built with Peter Prescott's Volcano Suns. This new Dredd Foole and the Din would set the Boston scene on fire from 1984-1987, playing more shows in a given month than the Burma-Din had played during their entire run. The band is the longest running and most fully realized group that Dredd Foole has ever been part of, and the music bears it out. For the first time, their full story will be told. This 2CD set features the complete Suns-Din era and almost doubles the group's historical output: both of their never-before-reissued albums -- 1985's Eat My Dust, Cleanse My Soul, and 1988's Take Off Your Skin -- plus unreleased studio tracks from multiple sessions and a bevy of never before heard live material from the height of the band's powers, including a complete show -- all remastered from the original tapes, all seen through rare and ecstatic photos by Boston scene documentarian Pat Ireton, all framed by extensive liner notes by the project's archivist. The effort includes a painstakingly remixed Take Off Your Skin, the Din's second album, recorded in '86 but not released until '88. This new mix reveals the under-distributed album as the band's magnum opus. After an exhaustive approach in which hundreds of live, studio, home, and private performances have been located and reviewed over several years, this monster third archival release is a both-barrels blast of peak radical expression music, proudly presented with the full cooperation of Dredd Foole, Volcano Suns, and guitarist Kenny Chambers.
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CVSD 102CD
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On this maiden recording, Chicago-based bassist Jason Roebke leads a new quartet, featuring his original compositions and a stellar lineup. The music, which was brilliantly recorded at Steve Albini's legendary Electrical Audio and expertly mixed and mastered by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio, is performed by veteran reed player Edward Wilkerson Jr., whose own bands Eight Bold Souls and Shadow Vignettes were among the great ensembles of eighties/nineties Chicago, extending the AACM tradition and spotlighting Wilkerson's sensitive improvising. Here, wielding tenor saxophone and alto clarinet, Wilkerson is a commanding -- but also supremely collaborative -- voice, joining the younger pianist Mabel Kwan and drummer Marcus Evans. Roebke's scores are rich and flexible, but they concentrate on exploring multifarious ways of stopping, something that's been a feature of the bassist's own improvisation for decades. Investigating the interrelationships between flow and cessation, the quartet is at once organic and halting, Roebke and Evans playing together with great assurance, but occasional interruptions of metronomes or Roebke's lo-fi cassette recordings pushing against the fluidity and expressiveness in revelatory ways. Roebke's own bass playing has been a feature of scads of ensembles, both working and ad hoc, including Jason Stein Trio, Jeb Bishop Trio, James Falzone's KLANG, Jorrit Dijkstra's Flatlands Collective, Pillow Circles, The Whammies, Keefe Jackson, and Mike Reed's People, Places, and Things. The CD package for Four Spheres comes adorned with a beautiful painting by Rebecca Shore.
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CVSD 103CD
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Tuned metal percussion figures prominently in the sound universe of Roscoe Mitchell. Many of Mitchell's early compositions for the Art Ensemble of Chicago feature xylophone and tuned bells, and his immersive set-up known as "The Cage" arranges an array of percussed instruments in a circle around him, including all sorts of metallophones and gongs. On Roscoe Village, Chicago-based improvisor Jason Adasiewicz has transcribed and arranged a selection of Mitchell-penned pieces, performing them all on solo vibraphone. Adasiewicz, who has been one of the most in-demand players on contemporary improvised music stages, with his group Sun Rooms, his quintet Rolldown, the ensemble Living By Lanterns (co-led with drummer Mike Reed), and in duets and quartets with saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, is back on the scene after a self-imposed five-year break from music. Originally commissioned to transcribe a few works as a surprise for Mitchell during the afterparty for an exhibition of paintings at Corbett vs. Dempsey at the beginning of 2023 Adasiewicz dug deeply into the archives. He transcribed and arranged several 1960s Art Ensemble cuts ("Old," "Toro," "Congliptious," "A Jackson In Your House," and the perennial "Carefree"), a cut from the '70s ("The Key"), and another from the '80s ("Jo Jar"). From the great LP The Third Decade, he chose a piece scribed by Mitchell's father ("Walking In the Moonlight") and from a recently uncovered Paris-era Art Ensemble composition sketchbook, he arranged a never-heard Mitchell work ("The Cartoon March"). Adasiewicz also worked up a version of one of Mitchell's favorite R&B tunes (Otis Blackwell's "Daddy Rollin' Stone"). On certain tracks he slowed the melody down drastically or split a harmonized part into its constituent parts, playing them in sequence rather than at once, on others he added his own composed material to the familiar Mitchell piece. This is the first time many of these historical works have been treated to a new arrangement, and it's also Adasiewicz's first solo record, a fact worth celebrating on its own. Sporting a 1968 painting by Mitchell on its cover, Roscoe Village is a unique document of two great minds in dialogue, one paying homage to the other by the mightiest means available: a highly attuned form of personal creativity.
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CVSD 101CD
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In the winter of 1980, Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson (1929-2010) brought his quartet to Milwaukee, where they were recorded live in concert. These tapes were first plumbed for The Milwaukee Tapes Vol. 1 on the Unheard Music Series in 2000. Anderson's group featured his long-time trumpeter Billy Brimfield (1938-2012) as well as his protege and percussionist Hamid Drake, then known as Hank, and bassist Larry Hayrod. Finally, after another couple of decades during which both Anderson and Brimfield have passed, Corbett vs. Dempsey is proud to present The Milwaukee Tapes Vol. 2, a full CD of previously unissued material from the same concert. Among the five tracks are four penned by Anderson, including his classic "3 On 2," as well as a rare composition by Brimfield, "He Who Walks Alone." The trumpeter is lithe and mercurial in this context, playing with his typical sense of mystery, while Anderson's huge tenor sound and unique approach to linear improvisation are in top form. Drake is, as always, the element that gets everything warmed up, his kit a veritable furnace, as propulsive as humanly possible. On The Milwaukee Tapes Vol. 2, the influence of Edward Blackwell on the 25-year-old drummer is clearly audible, with intricate polyrhythms and a full head of steam. Recently rediscovered, this second half of the Milwaukee session fills out the picture completely, offering a glimpse of one of the great figures of AACM Chicago in his prime, with a simpatico working band on a great night. The package includes beautiful portraits of Anderson and Brimfield, the contemporaneous color shot of the leader never before seen.
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