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In 1961 Sun Ra took off from Chicago – where he had established the Arkestra, his dedicated ensemble and the vehicle for his mission to better the planet – and with a scaled-down version of the band he landed in NewYork. Their first recording session was in Newark in October of that year. The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, recorded for the Savoy label, is a beautiful document of the material they'd honed during a long residency at the Wonder Inn at the end of the Chicago period. Among tracks left …

Limited edition split album from two of Earth’s avant-garde super powers: Asmus Tietchens and Kouhei Matsunaga. Last summer Important released some highly praised records with Kouhei Matsunaga including a collaborative CD with Sean Booth (Autechre) and Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic), a split LP with Mika Vainio and a full length  CD of his own solo work. The breath and quality of Kouhei's work was apparent across these three releases and his compositions for this split LP serve to create connections be…

2015 release. A reissue of arguably the rarest LP of European free jazz, Axiom, recorded in 1963 for the Swedish label Sonet. Test pressings were released to the musicians, but they were not approved and the label never printed more than the two first copies. Tom Prehn's music, which is exclusively known from a 1967 release that was reissued on the Unheard Music Series, is not only impossibly uncommon, it is also exceptionally wonderful, featuring an extended tenor saxophone solo by Frits Krogh …

*300 copies limited edition* This is the third release of the VOXXX series, a sound poetry magazine with 4 LP releases each year. A manifestation of poetry and voice, sound poetry and vocal art. A joined adventure by Erratum Musical (Paris) and Sonhoras (Barcelona). Precious cut and sound edition, along with beautiful artisan work made by hand in letterpress print.Eduard Escoffet is a Catalan sound poet. Born in Barcelona, for more than 20 years he has been touring all over Europe and America in…

*300 copies limited edition* New meta-poem from multilingual and polysonic voice artist Maja Jantar, this LP delivers two magnificent subtle and sensorial haunting pieces of free tonal modulations, exploring the voice as a tool to create musical textures shifting from free layered tones and vivid harmonics to free sound poetry channeling inner and outer streams of imaginary landscapes - where poetry walks into the field of contemporary music. Maja Jantar is a multilingual and polysonic voice art…

This is the first presentation of a lost jazz concert from the Helmut Brandt estate, recorded March 1963 at SFB Sendesaal/ Haus des Rundfunks in West Berlin. That evening the “Helmut Brandt Orchestra” consisted of eleven soloists from the Berlin radio orchestras of RIAS and SFB, including Benny Bailey, Herb Geller, Nat Peck and Ack van Rooyen. They played a one-off concert of mostly unknown compositions, taped by producer Hans Gertberg for inclusion in the huge archive of NDR Jazz Workshop recor…

Reissue of classic and long hard to find Purge/Sound League album from 1987 by Borbetomagus. Quartet session with the power-bass addition of Adam Nodelman. 1993 CD release “Seven Reasons for Tears beautifully documents the most simultaneously fierce and accessible periods of the band’s history. Converts and heathens can both bathe luxuriously in the radioactive improv-beauty-stream that lights up a room when the record is played at ‘special’ volume. Tears is the living spirit of Borbetomagus’ nu…

*2022 stock* The work of upstate New York noise-jazz trio Borbetomagus is frequently described in terms of overwhelming power and aggression. In a live context, that's absolutely the dominant impression one is likely to get. On record, though, it's possible to have some control over the volume, and thus to listen closely and carefully and discern real technique at work, not to mention a subtlety that's not really surprising, given that saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich, and guitarist Dona…

*Edition of 300 glass-mastered CDs in wallet with spine.* "Keefe Jackson on tenor & bass clarinets, Raoul Van Der Weide on bass & cracklebox, and Frank Rosaly on drums are heard in this 2022 live performance at De Roze Tanker in Amsterdam, reuniting the Chicago reedist with Rosaly, who is now based in Amsterdam, for six free jazz tunes: two Jackson compositions and four superb collective dialogs." - squidco.comKettle Hole Records is a Chicago-based independent record label, which specializes in …

Reissue, originally released in 1985. Gentle, incisive solo music for violin and electronics by one of the unsung giants of free improvisation. Philipp Wachsmann emerged in the fertile mid '70s underground free music scene in London, playing with everyone from Simon Mayo to Barry Guy to Derek Bailey to Evan Parker, starting a band called Chamberpot, making albums for the collective artist-run label he managed: Bead Records. These LPs, 26 of them in total, were made in tiny batches and are now ra…

*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies.* 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 ve…

2012 release. A reissue of Joe McPhee's Variations On A Blue Line / 'Round Midnight, originally released on Hat Hut Records in 1979. Variations On A Blue Line / 'Round Midnight was recorded in October, 1977, during a highly significant period in Poughkeespie, New York, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's work, as he was pioneering the transatlantic, collaborative spirit that has helped to define the last three decades of his career. Blue Line comes from a concert in Rouen, France, when McPhee pla…

2015 release. On the occasion of improviser and composer Wadada Leo Smith's exhibition Ankhrasmation: The Language Scores, 1967-2015 at Chicago's Renaissance Society, Corbett Vs. Dempsey present Red Chrysanthemums, a previously unreleased live recording of solo performances by Smith, documented in Los Angeles in December of 1977. Three adventurous, spacious tracks that feature Smith's unique and innovative trumpet, as well as percussion, tuned percussion, and flute, all captured as Smith was in …

The duo of saxophonist Larry Stabbins and percussionist Roy Ashbury was a mainstay of the London improvised music scene in the early 1970s. They recorded their lone LP, Fire Without Bricks, in 1976, and issued it in a tiny edition on the cooperatively run Bead label. Stabbins has toggled between more pop-oriented projects like Working Week and Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra and adventurous free music in bands led by Peter Brötzmann and Tony Oxley. Born in Wolverhampton and based initially i…

Two hardcore proponents of free improvisations from different generations meet for a granular explosion.

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 t…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey presents the second 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.

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…

*In process of stocking.* 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…

Artist and musician Rosa Barba paired up with drummer Chad Taylor for their first duo record, In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneous Visibility. Documenting a September 2019 performance and installation at New York's Park Avenue Armory, part of an invitation by pianist Jason Moran, the CD's two mesmerizing tracks clock in at over 30-minutes each. Patiently built as collaborative soundscapes, they feature Barba's unorthodox conjoining of cello and film projector in which she uses the celluloid as an…

In 2013, Claire Chase instigated a project designed to cultivate an entirely new body of work for flute. A MacArthur Fellow, Harvard professor, and indomitable musical force who co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, Chase began commissioning work, with the idea of doing so until the centennial of Edgard Varése's seminal flute solo "Density 21.5," in 2036. This deluxe 4-CD set is the first fruit of these commissions, realized in the first three years of the project, featuring 17 wor…

If you've missed out on bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, now's your chance to play some catch up ball. He's one of creative music's most eloquent exponents, having emerged from the fertile Swedish jazz scene around 2005. With his band Torbjörn Zetterberg Hot Five, he began a fruitful relationship with the thoroughly excellent Moserobie label, run by his frequent band mate, saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, and by the time he was making records like Skildrar Kvinnans Kamp and Och Den Stora Frågen, Corbet…

Some recordings, the world is just not ready for them when they're made. In 2008, Swedish born, Austrian resident saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Poughkeepsie, New York multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee made a suite of studio recordings, Brace For Impact that they loved so much they immediately culled, mixed, and mastered them. A decade later, when the original label for which they were planned had not yet issued them, Gustafsson and McPhee offered them to Corbett Vs. Dempsey, and when the label …

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present the first CD reissue of Beaver Harris and Don Pullen 360º Experience's A Well-Kept Secret, originally released on Shemp Records in 1984. Of all the never-issued-on-CD items in history's dustbin, A Well-Kept Secret is perhaps the most egregious. The beautiful studio recording, made under the watchful ear of überproducer Hal Willner, was first issued on LP in 1985 on Willner's own Shemp label. With its unconventional lineup featuring steel drums, Latin percussion, and F…

Although he is best known as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker, one of the architects of structural cinema, and visual artist, Michael Snow has been active as a musician since the 1950s. In Greenwich Village of the 1960s, his loft was the site of concerts by Cecil Taylor and other paragons of free jazz, and Snow's film New York Eye And Ear Control featured a soundtrack by Albert Ayler's group and starred its members (ESPDISK 1016CD/LP). A brilliant keyboardist and occasional trumpeter, …

2020 stock. 2017 release. Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Suns Of Arqa's Revenge Of The Mozabites, originally released on Rocksteady Records in 1980. One of the key ensembles in the history of what is now referred to as world music, Suns Of Arqa began in 1979 with Revenge Of The Mozabites, the brainchild of Michael Wadada. With a ground base of dub -- in both aesthetic and method -- made palpable by master dub rhythm section of Style Scott on drums and Lizard Logan on bass, and produced…

2020 stock. 2017 release. Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Suns Of Arqa's Revenge Of The Mozabites, originally released on Rocksteady Records in 1980. One of the key ensembles in the history of what is now referred to as world music, Suns Of Arqa began in 1979 with Revenge Of The Mozabites, the brainchild of Michael Wadada. With a ground base of dub -- in both aesthetic and method -- made palpable by master dub rhythm section of Style Scott on drums and Lizard Logan on bass, and produced…

2016 release. Multi-instrumental master Joe McPheeand his longtime colleague, French saxophonist and clarinetist André Jaume, joined forces for this studio recording in 1979 that was prepared but never released. It is primarily structured around pairs of tunes by Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington (or Billy Strayhorn), adding Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" for good measure. The results are stunningly intimate and show the twosome's capacity for creative interplay at a fairly e…

2015 release. A reissue of Steve Lacy and Steve Potts's Tips, originally released on Hat Hut Records in 1981. Soprano saxophonist Lacy wrote the suite of tunes for Tips to feature the aphorisms of painter Georges Braque, as sung by Irene Aebi. Together with his right-hand-man, alto saxophonist Potts, he and Aebi recorded these 14 anthemic tracks in Paris in 1979, and the young hat Hut Records label issued them on a now-rare LP. The music allowed Lacy to extend and deepen his longstanding interes…

Miki Yui is a musician, artist, and composer, originally from Tokyo, who has been based in Düsseldorf since 1994. Her whose work has long explored multiple forms of media, while documenting liminal zones of perception. On her latest album, As If, Yui creates a subtly connected suite of electronic music, drawn from improvisations and randomised processes that she has engaged with modular synthesis. Deeply poetic in its expression, even at its most minimal, the six pieces on As If have a curious t…

Mika Vainio was recoording a new Ø-album since 2014. He almost got it ready before his too early passing in 2017. Mika's girlfriend Rikke Lundgreen from Oslo has been going through his notes, numerous versions and takes of the album treacks. Now the collection of the tracks is completed. There were two tracks that Mika thought should not be included the album. They make this release. The shoter track Kulmamomentti is edited slightly longer by Jimi Tenor and Timo Kaukolampi.

Widely considered one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, Townes Van Zandt has been hailed by such singers as Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and Willie Nelson. Fat Possum is proud to reissue four titles from his early career -- Townes Van Zandt, Our Mother the Mountain, Delta Momma Blues, and Flyin' Shoes -- that comprise an essential introduction to his best songs. Recorded between 1969 and 1978, Van Zandt's most prolific (and most critically acclaimed) decade, these four titles are th…

2014 release. In July 2013, a few months after the passing of his mother, cornetist Rob Mazurekperformed solo at the Corbett Vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago. Mazurek is one of the highest profile figures in contemporary creative music, leading bands like the Exploding Star Orchestra, Skull Sessions Octet, and Starlicker. On this occasion, he brought a box filled with various implements -- his cornet, naturally, but flutes, bells, books, maracas, apples, and little electronics. This box became an …

From 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 apartmen…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present The Lost Eddie Chatterbox Session, a reissue of Eugene Chadbourne's album, first released as a cassette on No Prestige Records in 1988. Dateline: Christmas Day, 1977, San Francisco. On an ailing quarter-track tape deck, in a marathon session, Eugene Chadbourne recorded a series of slide guitar solos playing compositions by the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman, along with a few standards and originals. Although the record…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey presents the second 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.

2012 release. In 1981, Joe McPhee culled together one of his greatest bands to record Topology (1981), his classic outing for Hat Hut Records. Featuring an expanded version of Po Music, his ensemble with saxophonist André Jaume, guitarist Raymond Boni, and bassist François Mechali, the group included pianist Irene Schweizer, percussionist Pierre Favre, baritone saxophonist Daniel Bourquin, cellist Michael Overhage, and trombonist Radu Malfatti. One of the tracks left on the cutting room floor wa…

In November 1977 and May 1978, months before drummer Phillip Wilson recorded his great LP Duet with trumpeter Lester Bowie for the Improvising Artists label, Wilson hit the studio for Esoteric, a recording of solos and duets with cornetist Olu Dara. Wilson (1941-1992) was one of the keypercussionists in creative music, the Art Ensemble of Chicago's early trapsman, one third of the fusion band Full Moon, and an all around fount of invention and sensitivity. In addition to his work in the jazz and…

In 2018, Mats Gustafsson provided raw saxophonic material for the elusive Wendy Gondeln, who sometimes applied a scalpel, sometimes a pneumatic drill, to rework, remix, reimagine all the Swede's squeaks, pops, blats, and tones. In some places, Gondeln adds violent violin to thicken the roux, making Ornette's fiddling seem like Yehudi Menuhin. Uncommon bedfellows: disjunct techno and improvised music. But the Shitholes make it work brilliantly, even inviting minimal techno pioneer and co-founder …

An übertrio drawn from distinct parts of the creative music spectrum, The Underflow was recorded during a sizzling two-night stand in May 2019. In a series of duets and trios, guitarist David Grubbs, saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and trumpeter Rob Mazurek met headlong for the first time, converging not only their acoustic and electric instruments, but at times submerging themselves in a tangle of electronics, then emerging into shamanic bell-shaking chant or chest-rattling howl. Ranging from extr…