Malik King was an important part of the St Louis jazz scene of the 70's & 80's. He studied under Albert Ayler in NY in the early 70s before returning to the Midwest. He was a member of the Shirley Le Flore's ensemble "Free N' Concert". He also served as musical director of The Creative Arts & Expression Lab, The African Peoples Continuum, & The Black Arts Alliance, The worrier poets, The Human Arts Ensemble, as well as various Emerging Force Ensembles. Zimbabwe Nkenya (1953-2022), a creative artist and innovative musician, was brought up on army bases in the USA and Spain. He spent 30 years traveling and performing in New York, New Mexico, Arizona and St Louis. playing with a who's who of jazz. In New Mexico he became an integral part of the scene, producing and hosting the KUNM'S radio show "THE HOUSE THAT JAZZ BUILT" . Luckily Malik self released "Time & Condition" in 1982, capturing his work together with Qaiyim Shabazz. It's not just a crate diggers Holy Grail, but an important artistic and historic document of the St Louis scene. Time & Condition stands alone as a (very) individual, spiritual jazz classic. Maurice Malik King - Alto saxophone, voice, & small instruments Qaiyim Shabazz - Congas Drums Zimbabwe Nkenya - Bass Violin

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 Ginzburg, 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. A Reflection On Ida Lupino [06:28] A Self Portrait in Three Colors [13:14] Route 84 Quarantine Blues [06:53] Cuernavaca ’79 [02:23] Goodbye Porky Pig Hat [06:59] Be Gone Damn Bug [01:24] Forget Paris [01:25] Do You Still Love Me? [01:22] Improvision For The End Of COVID [01:01] Im-Pro-Vi-Sation [3:01] Tzedek, Tzedek (For RBG) [05:49] Joe McPhee, saxophone Cover design and artwork by Christopher Wool. CD design by David Khan-Giordano. Produced by John Corbett and Christopher Wool.   CvsDCD081

A classic mid-1970s outing from the Schlippenbach Quartett. Partially released on CD (tracks 2 & 3 only) as part of the massive FMP retrospective box, this is the only in-print edition of this crucial LP. "On all 3 'live' pieces, one experiences the unrelenting intensity (even during quiet sections) that this quartet exudes. Schlippenbach is in sublime form, his two-fisted attacks pushing the pianos to their limits. Parker rips, tears and growls. His feature piece, 'Black Holes,' being an early example of his circular breathing techniques on soprano sax, which he uses to create piercing split tone walls. And Kowald and Lovens thrust and push, laying down textures as well rhythms." - Milo Fine, Sweet Potato --- Evan Parker / soprano & tenor saxophoneAlexander von Schlippenbach / pianoPeter Kowald / double bassPaul Lovens / percussion --- Side A (track 1) recorded live by Michael Krause on June 2nd, 1974, at the 3rd New Jazz Festival Moers. Side B (tracks 2 & 3) recorded live by Jost Gebers on February 2nd, 1975, at the Quartier Latin in Berlin.

Second LP in the catalog of German guitarist and instrument inventor Hans Reichel (1949-2011), a program of microtonal string investigations that is still beguiling and fresh four decades later. Originally released by FMP in 1976, with a hilarious cover by Reichel himself. Never before available on CD, remastered from original tapes, packaged with gatefold and tip-on cover reprinting the original design. Like Reichel's debut, a super-rare slice of musical otherness.

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. Limited edition of 500 copies. Southern Monoluge (6:00 minutes) Bonobo Beach II (4:30 minutes) Could Be Nice (9:20 minutes) Two Small Pieces Announced by Cigar-box a) (3:00 minutes) b) (3:45 minutes) Bonobo Beach I (7:45 minutes) Could Be Nice Too (5:30 minutes)Fretless Spanish guitar on piece 1; 6-string guitar with extra frets on the covering board on piece 4; 12-string guitar with extra frets on the covering board on pieces 2 and 5; electric pick-behind-the-bridge-guitar on pieces 3 and 6; everything taped as played. Recorded April 1981 in Wupperlal.Compositions, recording, pictures and design by Hans Reichel.CvsDCD094

Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind. Working closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes. Ernest Hood’s Back to the Woodlands will be issued on vinyl, as well as on CD in combination with its contemporary Where the Woods Begin, with new liner notes by Michael Klausman.

A fantastic new release by Rory Salter aka Malvern Brume on Index Clean The two main ideas behind the music are to make use of domestic and work situations. Most of it was recorded in a new flat I moved into last year. The place had a really interesting acoustic and after so many years of making music in whatever flat I was living in I wanted to do something where you could really hear the place it was recorded/the surrounding area. So a lot of the recordings are done in different locations in the flat, and often re-played back into the flat and recorded using different speakers and microphones. A lot of material was recorded whilst performing usual domestic activities and would spend quite a lot of time running between rooms doing other tasks at the same time as recording. The name of the 'On the Floor, by the Door' track is because that's where I recorded a fair bit of it, by the front door. It's in a similar way that I used and included my job in the pieces. I work as a sound technician at a university in the day and as a sound engineer in the evenings a couple times a week. I've been thinking (and talking a lot of shit) about work and art making recently and I’m really into stuff where the persons found some way to include their day job in their art in a way that sort of re-purposes the skills, materials, time etc of work. So anyway I did a lot of this, really thinking about skills I've picked up and making the effort to borrow some really otherwise unattainable equipment. I thought a lot about space and acoustic-ness during the process so a lot of it again is about me wanting sound to exist within a space; reamping sounds into spaces, or recording synthesised sounds through different speakers positioned in ways to filter and alter the sound. A lot of these practices are things I've developed and talked about a lot at work. Friends also feature quite a bit in relatively candid ways and crop up in recordings here and there. I guess there's a desire to get to a point of a 'life' music, where it feels a bit everyday and blurs the line a bit, that's when things are most interesting to me.- Rory Salter 

2023 restock. Subtitled: Live at the Kulturforum, Bonn, Germany, November 24, 1980. Another in the Wooden Weavil series, this time an unreleased live Robbie Basho recording from Germany in 1980. Robbie Basho was one of the great pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in the U.S., along with Leo Kottke and John Fahey in the 1960s. This program appears to have been recorded in one go. Robbie scatters his Americana numbers throughout, beginning with "Redwood Ramble," and ending with "California Raga." This date finds Robbie in fine fettle, his playing sharpened by the intensity of touring, his mood seems ebullient, at times (as on "Fandango") he comes off like John Lee Hooker's sun-kissed cousin, stomping furiously along to his playing. There is sweetness to his material, yes, but this is not, as Jack Rose put it, "music for wineries." There is the galloping muscularity of Basho's playing, coupled with the sheer hugeness of his sound; the fearless employment of dissonance as part of his musical make-up; a love for the unexpected chord change. Robbie was a voracious and uncompromising player. Basho's singing was as integral to who he was as his guitar playing, and when he opened his mouth, he filled the room with sound. Say what you like about his lyrics, no one can accuse Basho of dilettantism, of dabbling, or of trying something on merely for effect. Whatever bag he was in, he was in all the way. Liner notes from Glenn Jones and Stephen Basho-Junghans, and beautifully remastered by Glenn Jones.

French guitar player Boni teamed up with legendary US jazz-musician McPhee in the early 80s for some intense cooperations and albums (as a duo and as a trio with Andre Jaume). The complete concert inspired by the words of Eric Dolphy:  "When you hear music, After it's over, It's gone, In the air, You can never capture it again." --- Joe McPhee / soprano saxophone, electronics and voice Raymond Boni / Electric guitar and electronics --- Recorded at Hulsey Recital Hall on the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) campus. April 20,1985

"The FIMAV performance is an extraordinary recording, an aural opportunity to hear the Ensemble exploring at length, stretching the contemporaneous studio documentation, but even with the Ensemble’s brilliant and transformative history, Sainkho Namtchylak’s spontaneous addition to Fixing is unique. Namtchylak’s intensity transcends the metaphoric. This performance is not folkloric. It is folklore. It is not shamanic. It is shamanism. The ElectroAcoustic Ensemble is one of the most significant events in the humanization of electronic music, in making it mobile and spontaneously responsive. Fluctuating, by the Ensemble itself, is more than a valuable document, it’s a major revelatory work." - Stuart Broomer

A 2012 set of trio improvisations by Evan Parker playing soprano saxophone, Mark Nauseef playing metallophone based percussion and Toma Gouband playing lithophone based percussion. Recorded by Evan's friend and brilliant engineer Adam Skeaping in the warm, natural acoustics of St Peters, Whitstable. "Lacking the pyrotechnics of some of his recordings, such as his solo circular-breathing marathons, As the Wind is a slow-burner that ends up being just as impressive in different ways. In time, as well as one of Parker's best it seems likely to be judged one of 2016's best releases." All About Jazz

In his upstate NY secret laboratory, home-based in Poughkeepsie, Joe McPhee diligently documented his activities throughout the '70s, with the help of Craig Johnson, the producer who started CjR as an outlet for McPhee's music. Among the unreleased tapes waxed in that span, Alone Together is unique and especially beautiful. Like Sound on Sound (released by Corbett vs. Dempsey in 2010), these recordings make use of multitrack recording, overdubbing McPhee upon McPhee, however where those earlier recordings had an experimental tendency, the Alone Together tracks were more compositional in nature, allowing the multi-instrumentalist to build and sculpt each piece, creating complete wind ensembles one track at a time. In 1974 and then again in a longer session in 1979, McPhee recorded in concise solo, duo, and trio contexts, and in more extensive brass and reed quartets – all McPhee, all the time. Going head-to-head with the best of the saxophone foursomes of the era, McPhee is a one-man-WSQ, his probing investigations and lyrical statements as incisive and insightful as those of his best-known recordings. McPhee's own enthusiasm for these never-before-heard recordings betrays their significance in his large and ever-mounting discography. Corbett vs. Dempsey is honored, after so long, to finally make them available.

A tremendous collection of recordings from famed Fluxus poet and artist Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004).  Originally published on New Wilderness Audiographics as a cassette in 1977, these recordings have been cleaned up and remastered by Sean McCann in 2018.  Jackson’s beautiful text formulas are supplemented by stereo multi-tracking, creating a spatial jungle of wordplay. One gem of this CD is the live foray into tape manipulation from 1966 featuring the assistance of James Tenney and Max Neuhaus. It is fabled that they took Jackson’s voice and slowed it down to a guttural thunderstorm during playback, resulting in a manic blend of words darting through a black cloud of reverberation.  Only a small amount of Jackson’s sound poetry is available, making this collection a delight to swallow and digest. Produced with Charlie Morrow, we are thrilled to re-present this history to the ears of both young and old. Edition of 250 Glass-mastered CD housed in Jewel-case 8-page insert with scores and introduction by Charlie Morrow

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. --- Piano: Tom PrehnBass: Poul EhlersDrums: Finn SlumstrupTenor Saxophone: Fritz KroghRemastered by Sigurd Djurhuus ---TracklistA Side A 22:28B Side B 21:49 --- Released: Corbett vs Dempsey

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 über- producer 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 French horns, along with the co-leaders’ drum-kit and piano, it is among the most wonderful outings of its decade. Pullen was in top form, his inside-outside approach to the keyboard perhaps optimally heard on the exuberant “Double Arc Jake,” where the bright melody suddenly breaks into pieces, snapping back into miraculous shape. The band includes Hamiet Bluiett on baritone saxophone and Ricky Ford on tenor saxophone, along with Buster Williams on bass, Francis Hayes on steel pans, and a special brass section led by Sharon Freeman on the 17-minute “Goree.” All compositions by Harris and Pullen. With the original cover design by Ralph Steadman reproduced in all its glory, the CD was remastered from unplayed vinyl, as the tapes were destroyed in a fire. This is one of the classic records of creative music in the ‘80s, available for the first time in any digital form. Beaver Harris, drums Don Pullen, piano Hamiet Bluiett, baritone saxophone Ricky Ford, tenor saxophone Buster Williams, bass Francis Haynes, steel drums Candido, percussion (1) Sharon Freeman, Willie Ruff, Bill Warnick, Greg Williams, french horn

The original soundtrack performed by Tomeka Reid & co. for the critically-acclaimed, feature-length 2014 documentary, "Hairy Who and The Chicago Imagists," directed by Leslie Buchbinder of Pentimenti Productions. "Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists" is a lavishly-illustrated romp through Chicago's art history, and the first film to tell the Imagists’ whole story. The narrative begins with the artists' explosion onto the scene in the 1960s, follows their precipitous fade from prominence in the 1980s and '90s, and concludes with their 21st century resurgence in popularity. Over the last 50 years, the Imagists have influenced generations of artists, including contemporary figures like Jeff Koons, Chris Ware, Kerry James Marshall, Peter Doig, and Gary Panter. The Imagists' roller-coaster ride through art history is re-created in this film with a wealth of archival footage and photographs, and over forty interviews with the Imagists themselves, critics, curators, collectors, and contemporary artists. Chicago-based cellist and composer Tomeka Reid, a mainstay on the Windy City scene and an important contemporary member of the A.A.C.M., was commissioned to create original music for the first documentary to chronicle the Imagists, Chicago’s hometown post-surrealists who exhibited together starting in the mid-1960s. Reid composed theme music for the film and made a wide range of multi-track improvisations based on moods, creating a tableau from which the film drew as it unwound the artists’ circuitous tale. For the CD, Reid returned to the studio to make new versions of some of the tracks and to transform the extant material into a fully realized suite of music. It retains a sense of light-heartedness and depth, whimsy and melancholy, adding voice and percussion to her indelible cello.

From David GrubbsThis recording documents Manuel Mota’s and my first public performance as a duo. We had played together previously for a recording session—a relaxed afternoon at Lisbon’s ZDB, where I recall zoning out, guitar in my hands, watching the endless throng of people Sunday-strolling past the plate glass window next to the stage. That deeply pleasurable afternoon session felt like a live accompaniment to a film.This recording also documents, for the both of us, a first indoor collaborative performance since the beginning of the pandemic. It felt familiar—I do remember how to do these things—and yet upped in its intensity of focus, and afterward that much more imprinted in memory, even prior to sitting down with this recording. It seemed I could have narrated it after the fact, its various twists and turns, which is not often the case for me with improvised concerts, details of which often vanish—to return who knows when—or transform into a series of disconnected impressions.One of the things that I love about Manuel’s playing is that as a listener I quickly abandon my search for the logics of continuity that apply to most performers. With Manuel I rarely feel that I anticipate the shape of a given phrase in the time of its unfolding—as a duo we’re definitely not finishing one another’s sentences—nor do I sense that I’m tracking larger structures in the making to serve as signposts for the performance as a whole. The two of us first met more than a decade ago, but throughout many conversations we haven’t spent much time speaking analytically about playing, never really compared notes from inside. It’s not that we’ve chosen not to talk about music, or that there’s a barrier or unspoken ideology to doing so. There’s always something else to talk about.This concert took place in the Biblioteca Municipal of Barreiro, a smaller city to the southeast of Lisbon across the Tejo River estuary. “Na margem sul” means “on the south bank,” and is commonly used to refer to the area south of the Tejo. For a first time returning in many months to playing in an indoor setting, the library seemed an especially welcoming location. 

Made over a period of five years, Luc Ferrari's Cycle Des Souvenirs is a large-scale electoacoustic work that revisits numerous periods from his five decades of composition, a veritable "best-of" composed of entirely new material!