Browse by Label: ATAVISTIC

Artist:	BRANCA, GLENN
Title:	Symphony No. 2 (The Peak Of The Sacred)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 005CD

2004 repress of this 1995 release; the entire Branca catalog on Atavistic is now available again! Atavistic has quietly erected the near complete recorded works of Glenn Branca, whose vision of guitar-generated power-symphonic sound is, in simple terms, one of the most exhilarating and important musical gestures of the contemporary era. First issue of this '82 performance; 10 guitars (including Thurston & Lee on special Branca-engineered "mallet guitars"), plus the massive force of Zev's bass drum & metal.

Artist:	BRANCA, GLENN
Title:	Symphony No. 6 (Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 010CD

1993 CD release and one of Mr. Branca's absolute masterworks: 10 guitars and bass & drums, beautifully studio-recorded. Originally released by Blast First in 1989. From the liner notes by Tim Holmes: "If one piece of music could possibly be all music, then you're holding it in your hands. I have played this album thousands of times since 1989 & it's still metamorphosing, trillions of layers pealing away translucent sound vibrating new electric worlds the hammer and hum of the infernal/celestial engine...the ubermusik of the spheres, as terrible and gorgeous as desire."

Artist:	BRANCA, GLENN
Title:	Symphony #5
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 015CD

2008 repress. Subtitled "Describing Planes Of an Expanding Hypersphere". Recorded in 1984 but held up in a post-production stasis until now, this is music for 5 guitars, mallet guitar, violin, drums, bass, keyboards, that is being touted as the "most dense, cacophonous Branca symphony yet." "Glenn's music gets quite often inaccurately described as wall-of-sound/noise/guitars/whatever. A wall exists for the purpose of containment. 'Symphony No. 5' is expansive beyond limits, smashing the wall (at least sonically) between this dimension & all others. There is quite audibly the garblings of the voices of alien intelligences banging at the doors of our world as we dream of theirs."

Artist:	BRANCA, GLENN
Title:	The World Upside Down
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 016CD

2004 repress. Branca's long anticipated foray into orchestral music. Recorded in Nov, 1990. "Performed by The New York Chamber Sinfonia, 'The World Upside Down' is a masterpiece of bright, organic structures & tones tempered in the eerie darkness typified by Branca's best work...Sonically and emotionally boundless, seemingly comprised of interplanetary musics from the netherworlds, 'The World Upside Down's celestial nature will especially appeal to fans of Branca's crystalline 'Symphony No. 3' recording."

Artist:	BRANCA, GLENN
Title:	Selections From The Symphonies (For Electric Guitar)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 035CD

Intro sampler collection of Glenn's various guitar orchestra classics for the uninitiated. " Glenn has personally selected a track listing representative of his absolute unique-on-this-planet vision, with material ranging from the delicate celestial beauty of Symphony No. 3 to the demonical, otherworldly terror unfurled in No. 10. Selections is the ultimate 'in' to Branca's work if you're yet unacquainted with the most influential composer of the era."

Artist:	BRANCA, GLENN
Title:	Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 046CD

"Long rumored, long-awaited and essentially first-time issue of this incendiary Branca masterwork, recorded in 1981 at NYC's Radio City Studios -- during the peaked out early era of Glenn's 'Guitar Army' ensembles -- and shortly after the release of The Ascension EPon 99 Records. Featuring contributions from soon-to-be Sonic Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo, as well as Branca mainstays Craig Bromberg, Barbara Ess, Jeffrey Glenn, Sue Hanel, David Rosenbloom and Ned Sublette, Indeterminate also contains two other pieces: John Cage's infamous anti-Branca interview with Wim Mertins, captured at Chicago's Navy Pier back in 1982; and a gorgeous, previously unreleased composition 'Harmonic Series Chords,' performed by The New York Chamber Sinfonia in 1989. This potent, apocryphal missing link in the Master's discography has finally been made available for public consumption!"

Artist:	MARS
Title:	78+
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 048CD

Crucial document of this seminal NYC band from the late 70s, considered by many in retrospect to be the most influential no wave band from the era. A quartet of Sumner Crane, China Burg, Mark Cunningham & Nancy Arlen, they recorded revolutionary EPs for Ze and Lust/Unlust, as well as contributing to the infamous No New York LP."To the uninitiated, Mars may sound like listening to a laundromat magnified. That's because every instrument is making a sound, but who is making which sound? Instead of one direct sound or beat the music travels in at least 3 different directions, speeds of rhythm making a totally orbital sound, one that never really enters the ear instead spinning around the head. At times it sounds like tortured children singing in 7 different tongues." --Stella Doon, 1977.

Artist:	DON KING
Title:	One-Two Punch
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 049CD

Reissue of the 1985 EP and numerous unreleased bonus tracks from this NY no wave group featuring Mark Cunningham & Lucy Hamilton (Connie Burg) of Mars, plus Arto Lindsay, Duncan Lindsay, & Toni Nogueira. "Don King began in the spring of '81, at roughly the same time as Swans (MK. 2) and Sonic Youth. As a trio, they made their debut at the White Columns Noise Fest. Described as 'purely magical' by Thurston Moore, their sound was a stark & slitherin' sort of string/drum interplay upon which a horn would swing in Ayler/root cadence. Don King remained a trio until late '83; with the addition of percussions Toni Nogueira and Arto's brother Duncan, they recorded the 5 songs that appeared on their Doublevision EP...it has a lopin' popppin' base of equatorial percussion locked in conflict with bendin', blendin' post-cool hornage." --Byron Coley.

Artist:	MARCLAY, CHRISTIAN
Title:	Records (1981-89)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 062CD

Much anticipated release of early material (including unissued stuff) from the NYC master of high-art/lo-destruction vinyl manipulation. Features tracks from 1981 through 1989: early cassette-only material, obscure comp tracks, etc., packaged with detailed annotation from Marclay and liner notes from Thurston Moore. "One Thousand Cycles" is from one of Marclays's infamous recycled records -- cut up and reconfigured vinyl. "Second Coming" & "His Master's Voice" are relatable to hip hop dj-ing, but with Marclay's distinct cut-up aura; "Groove" is a massive looped drone track. The whole thing reeks of historic significance, yet still sounds vital in a contemporary sense as well -- this is the record you have been waiting for.

Artist:	MILES WITH ALAN LICHT & KEIJI HAINO, GERRY
Title:	Gerry Miles
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 071CD

"Gerry Miles stripped vaudeville-style in Seattle from the 1930's to the 60's..." Nobody seems to explain what that has to do with this recording of an amazing improv that took place in St. Peter's Cathedral in NY a couple years back. It features Connie Burg (ex-Mars) on bass clarinet, Keiji Haino on vocals, Alan Licht on pipe organ & Melissa Weaver on piano. "The avant-improv results of their collaboration will astound, mesmerize and transport you to the next solar system."

Artist:	E.A.R.
Title:	Millennium Music
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 072CD

"Featuring performances by Sonic (SP3, Spectrum), Eddie Prevost (AMM), Pete Bassman (SP3) & Tom Prentice (God) on a truly unique variety of vintage synths, voltage-controlled electronics, Theremins and acoustic & electric strings, Millennium Music presents a cortex-stimulating vision depicting the vast expanse of time immemorial, from the pre-historic era through the digital age...a brain-baking collage of rich analogue sounds emulating (among other things) dinosaurs, insects, computers, wild animals, synthesized human speech & sounds of modern transportation, generating a hypnotic reflection of the earth's intangibly massive epochs."

Artist:	NRG ENSEMBLE, THE
Title:	Bejazzo Gets A Facelift
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 073CD

Latest release by this group, previously under the leadership of the late Hal Russell. Now led by saxophonist: Mars Williams; with: Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, Brian Sandstrom & Steve Hunt. "The NRG Ensemble's Atavistic debut demonstrates an exciting & diverse new musical approach by the legendary Chicago-based institution. Bejazzo balances the gamut of NRG's composed signature works with intense new improvisational pieces seldom found on their previous released on the ECM, Delmark & Quinnah labels."

Artist:	LUNCH, LYDIA
Title:	8-EYED SPY
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 075CD

First CD issue of the long unavailable album and single originally on UK Fetish around the beginning of the 80s (plus unreleased material) by Lydia's most accessible musical ensemble. "8-Eyed Spy was developed by Lydia after the release of her landmark solo album, Queen Of Siam; the Spy were a sweaty, hot & heady concoction of unique rhythm section play (led by the legendary George Scott III) and frantic patchwork of sax/gtr blur. 8-Eyed Spy played a plethora of live gigs and were hugely popular, blending the visceral, the cerebral and the sexual: swamp-meets-slam-meets concrete slab."

Artist:	AZ
Title:	Music For Scattered Brains
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 081CD

Solo album by Azita from the Scissor Girls; previously available as a self-issued LP-only release; strange, brilliant electronic blippage that lives up to its title. "Imagine the sound of a vintage 1940's Western Union telex machine whirring away under the influence of heady pharmaceuticals, compelled by ingredients both naturally occurring and man-made. There's an eerily clandestine quality about Scattered Brains...strangely arcane, utterly personal music."

Artist:	BROTZMANN/PAGE HAMILTON, CASPAR
Title:	Zulutime
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 083CD

Issued in tandem with Blast First (UK) and Sub Rosa (Belgium). "You can hear it now, but can't quite imagine it completely: the organic, painterly throb of Caspar Brotzmann's smoldering pyrotechnics, colliding head on with the heavy, jazz-tinged virtuosity of Page Hamilton...this combination creates such an exciting, expansive sonic picture...if guitar as visceral mind-spirit exploration is your thing, then the once in a lifetime duet improvisation of Zulutime is a serious one-way ticket...out.

Artist:	JOHN GAVANTI
Title:
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 091CD

"We're nearing the end of the 20th century. It's time for Atavistic to reissue the world's only No Wave operetta. Circa 1980, Sumner Crane (one of the four visionaries comprising possibly the greatest band of the era, Mars), created a blindsiding, previously unheard and truly inspired art form: no wave music in the form of the operetta. He then wisely enlisted the creative services of several other NYC-based musical genius/kindred spirit-types, including Mark Cunningham & Constance Burg (his compatriots in Mars), Ikue Mori & Arto Lindsay (both of DNA), and Arto's brother Duncan (later of the esteemed Don King). The results, a romping, dada-driven take on Mozart's Don Giovanni would be released that summer on Mark Cunningham's short-lived Hyrax label. John Gavanti demonstrates to full advantage the unbelievable array of noisemaking talent gathered for this auspicious occasion, delivering a splattering melange of guitars, horns, percussion, all fronted by Sumner's (or 'Gavanti's,' should you prefer) otherworldly warble."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Arc 2: The Seventies
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 092CD

"The 2nd release in E. Sharp's series of archival digs -- a collection of live & studio recordings dating back to 1972, simultaneously demonstrating the depth, breadth and futuristic scope of his unique musical vision. The textures on Arc 2 range from fuzzed-out hyperguitar choirs, machine rhythms & free improvisation, to microtonal elegies and proto-ambient soundscapes. Elliott's intensely percussive techniques are deployed on all types of implements including tenor saxophones, acoustic guitars, and his fascinating home-brewed string instruments."

Artist:	BOXHEAD ENSEMBLE
Title:	The Last Place to Go
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 096CD

Documentation from the Dutch Harbor European film screening tour in 11/97. "The line up continued to evolve throughout the trip; this insured that each night was entirely different, creating a new montage as the images continued to grow and change with the different accompaniments. Performers on the European Screening Tour included Grubbs, Kim, Krassner, Oldham, Rizzo, Vandermark along with Edith Frost, Ryan Hembrey (Pinetop Seven), Jule Pommerleau (Bobby Conn Experience), Scott tuma (Souled American) and Mick Turner & Jim White (Dirty Three). These once-in-a-lifetime combinations of musical talent, venues, circumstances, and certainly the visual stimulation generated by the backdrop of the projected film has resulted in a truly sublime recorded work, totally unique and perhaps even more captivating than the film soundtrack (ATA 085)."

Artist:	MAGICAL POWER MAKO
Title:	Lo Pop Diamonds
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 101CD

Reissue of this album of recordings from the 80s, first issued by Marquee in Japan. "Lo Pop is truly a radical departure from the main body of his ultra-galactic guitar works. Steeped in a homemade brew of off-kilter folk pop, Lo Pop is endearingly naive to the end. Featuring performances by underground 'stars' Reira & Asuka, plus strange takes on two traditional Japanese tunes, this will appeal to fans who succumbed to the charms of early Shonen Knife, the pop theatricality of the Red Krayola, the clandestine spell of Beat Happening...and maybe even the Shaggs."

Artist:	CLINE/GREGG BENDIAN, NELS
Title:	Interstellar Space Revisited
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 102CD

"The decision to to risk performing, recording and ultimately releasing an homage to Coltrane & Rashied Ali demands a unique commitment and sensitivity to their work that simply exceeds the grasp of most musicians. Nels Cline and Gregg Bendian both know a thing or two about digging deeply on conceptual & musical levels, and have performed together for years. With Interstellar they have simultaneously struck a stunning, delicate balance between skillful interpretation and unmitigated textural beauty."

Artist:	TRICOLOR
Title:	Mirth + Feckless
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 108CD

"Tricolor features the deadly and estimable talents of percussionist David Pavkovic (Toe 2000, Boxhead Ensemble, Pinetop Seven), AACM member Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Isotope 127, Toe 2000), and Tatsu Aoki. Tricolor clearly operates within the realm of jazz, but this trio's unusual chemistry is truly something to behold. Their unique, whimsical musical language is both shared and developed on an incredibly sophisticated level, yet somehow never fails to keenly present the most essential ingredients and elemental textures in the music. Though one virtually see the very grain of their 'sound' emerging in any Tricolor number, the music never seems austere -- on the contrary, phrases such as 'rich complexity' and 'super-organic' quickly come to mind."

Artist:	VANDERMARK, KEN'S JOE HARRIOTT PROJECT
Title:	Straight Lines
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 115CD

"Straight after the two Joe Harriott albums, Free Form and Abstract, were finally reissued on CD, I bumped into saxophonist Lol Coxhill on the street. 'I'd forgotten how posh that music was,' he said to me. I can see what he means. The Harriott band -- Joe on alto saxophone, Shake Keane on trumpet and fl�gel, my near-neighbor Coleridge Goode on bass, Pat Smythe on piano, and percussion from Bobby Orr and Phil Seamen and sometimes Fran Holder -- had a formalism around the unconventional tune statements which contrasted nicely with Harriott's astonishingly passionate sax playing. Producer/critic/guitarist John Corbett had the original vinyl Harriotts and copied the albums to cassette, handing them to his fellow Chicagoan Ken Vandermark. Vandermark picked up on the compositions, and here's a real historical parallel: people had made such a noise about the freedom of the improvising, they'd missed the fact that Harriott's tunes were also revolutionary. It's to Ken's great credit that this is in no way a revival band. The instrumentation is very different, the lack of a piano loosens the texture, and the melodies are sometimes transformed. It seems right that Chicago-based players- already very hip to the European free improvisation scene -- should have picked up on some of the earliest European recordings of free music. Ken Vandermark (born Rhode Island, 1964) has worked extensively with local and European players, and I particularly like the clarinet/trombone combination with Jeb Bishop, reminding me of the intimacy of Pee Wee Russell's frontline with Marshall Brown. Vandermark's longtime collaborator Kent Kessler plays contrabass, and Tim Mulvenna is the drummer. The band works and the tunes sound good and natural." - - Steve Beresford, London, February 1999.

Artist:	CORBETT, JOHN & HEAVY FRIENDS
Title:	I'm Sick About My Hat
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 116CD

"Rather than simply remaining content with being one of the musical subculture's most passionate and intelligent voices, highly regarded journalist/raconteur/improvisor John Corbett has finally ventured into the realm of releasing a proper studio album of his own design. John's Heavy Friends comprise a noteworthy compliment of Chicago's finest improvisors, experimentalists, and avant-jazz types, including David Grubbs, Jeb Bishop, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Mats Gustafsson, Hamid Drake, Terri Kapsalis, Peter Von Bergen, and Jane Baxter Miller.

Artist:	MILLER'S BINARY SYSTEM, ROGER
Title:	From the Epicenter
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 117CD

"Massively regarded since his days as guitar assassin in the legendary Mission of Burma, Roger has since been making intensely sophisticated music, largely driven by his eclectic approach to prepared piano. He's released several critically acclaimed solo guitar and piano albums on Forced Exposure, Ace of Hearts, RRR and SST, which to a significant extent have led him to the pinnacle so readily apparent on From the Epicenter. Percussionist Larry Dersch joins Roger to form Binary System, likely the heaviest avant-classical duo on the planet. Binary's music is typically dark, complex, cinematic and loud. Its compelling nature is derived from a blueprint of heady neoclassicism, impressionistic avant-jazz leanings, and the relentless desire to rock (if such a term may be applied). In the final analysis, their unique aesthetic undoubtedly makes Binary System the spiritual kindred of Sir Glenn Branca."

Artist:	STEAM
Title:	Real Time
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 118CD

Reissue of the deleted Eighth Day Music label release. "Messrs. Vandermark, Kessler, and Mulvenna need little introduction, as they've firmly planted their flag as 3 members of the Vandermark 5. They're joined here by Jim Baker, one of the Big Windy's most talented pianists, to form Steam. Suffice it to say that Baker's play creates a wonderful new set of variables for Ken, Kent, & Tim to work within & without. A unique tableau upon which to inscribe some of their most elegant musical ideas."

Artist:	SPACEWAYS INCORPORATED
Title:	Thirteen Standards by Sun Ra & Funkadelic
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 120CD

"Ken Vandermark had long been interested in paying respect to and interpreting classic material by Sun Ra and Funkadelic, legendary artists so thoroughly influential and inventive that their importance can't really be overstated. The obvious challenge (and inherent risk) for the players is finding the elusive ground between reverent tribute and eidetic transformation. In the case of Spaceways Incorporated, a superbly skilled and impeccably balanced trio finds that rarefied musical destination." Ken Vandermark (reeds), Hamid Drake (drums), Nate Mcbride (acoustic & electric basses); studio recordings from Jan. 2000.

Artist:	CLINE, NELS
Title:	Destroy All Nels Cline
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 122CD

"In Destroy, Nels' big band project, rock, jazz & prog-tinged structures meet head on & careen off the guardrails; dreams are achieved in an ambitious 75:00+ time frame. He'd been building these compositions over a lengthy period of time, waiting for the stars to align properly to allow the direction & documentation of the pieces with a larger ensemble than his usual duo/trio/4tet projects. Nels sought & secured the services of electric harp goddess Zeena Parkins (fresh from recent studio sessions with Bjork), immaculate string benders G.E. Stinson, Carla Bozulich (Geraldine Fibbers/Scarnella), conjoined identical twin/trapman extraordinaire Alex Cline (Interzone). With the scale, drama & intensity to rival a great feature film, Destroy All Nels Cline will likely leave fans of big guitar music, out-jazz, Interstellar Space Revisited & avant/prog-rock agape in it's roiling wake."

Artist:	CORBETT & DAVEY WILLIAMS, JOHN
Title:	Humdinger
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 124CD

"Humdinger is a 'lovely' collection of musical improvisations by extraordinary Alabaman avant-guitarist/co-founder of the Trans Museq label & The Improvisor magazine/omnivorous surrealist/primary theorist of the 'Object Guitar Technique'/hilarious elder statesman of improvisation Davey Williams, and Chicago's main man about town: charming gadfly/bon vivante historian/cagey raconteur/ venerated educator/matchless reissue producer, John Corbett -- featured here on a variety of non-farming implements such as acoustic guitar, turntable, synthesizer, radio & keymonica."

Artist:	GREGG BENDIAN'S INTERZONE
Title:	Requiem For Jack Kirby
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 125CD

"Interzone's third release offers up a musical tribute to one of the 20th Century's most important & influential visual artists: Jack 'The King' Kirby. As a kid, composer/percussionist Gregg Bendian was an avid comic book reader and was deeply effected by Jack Kirby's virtuosic artwork and storytelling style. When his own interest in becoming an illustrator gave way to a love of making music, Bendian vowed he would someday pay tribute to this inspirational, yet often neglected hero of his youth. The compositions for Requiem push Interzone's nucleus of Bendian and Nels & Alex Cline to new heights of spectacular wordless communication. They endeavor with vibraphone, guitar & percussion to reflect the dramatic, sumptuously colorful, archetypally violent, lyrically beautiful and always bizarre sci-fi world of Kirby's art. Requiem for Jack Kirby is ambitious, cinematic, orchestral, and almost operatic in scope... sonic 'clobberin' time' is at hand, in an exciting full-color, oversized poster booklet!"

Artist:	BOXHEAD ENSEMBLE
Title:	Two Brothers
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 126CD

"The Boxhead Ensemble makes a glorious return after nearly a two-year hiatus, under the direction of Michael Krassner (Lofty Pillars); Two Brothers is their most distinctive & compelling album yet, a modern day meditation on 19th century American musics, circa the Civil War era. Highly detailed acoustic instrumentation dominates the aural landscape, propelled by the bountiful talents of Mick Turner & Jim White (The Dirty Three), Ryan Hembrey (Pinetop Seven), Glenn Kotche (Pinetop Seven/Jim O'Rourke), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Terminal 4), Jeff Parker (Tortoise/Isotope/Tricolor), Scott Tuma (Souled American), Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) & Guillermo Gregorio (Unheard Music Series) An extremely inviting haze emanates quietly from Two Brothers, drawing you further & further into its sonic web."

Artist:	VANDERMARK 5, THE
Title:	Acoustic Machine
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 128CD

"Each album in the V5's discography has been captivating, tuneful, muscular & focused; but Acoustic Machine their annual installment for 2001, is likely their most distilled effort yet. Bishop, Kessler, Mulvenna, Rempis and Vandermark continue to grow as a quintet and as individuals, by somehow simultaneously honing and widening their purview. As the tradition goes, Ken has chosen to dedicate each tune on Acoustic Machine to a particularly influential artist in his own development; the 'HBF Series' -- the first short pieces ever released by the group -- are an homage to visionary minimalist composer Morton Feldman; Archle Shepp, Elvin Jones, Julius Hemphill, Stan Getz & Lester Young also 'get theirs'."

Artist:	EX & HAN BENNINK, TERRIE
Title:	The Laughing Owl
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 129CD

"The Laughing Owl presents the proceedings of a heady musical summit: seventeen sublime, challenging duets from The Ex's guitarist, Terrie Ex & Dutch free-jazz legend Han Bennink. These gents' resumes are the stuff musical dreams are made of. The Ex's credentials as a musical entity & as human beings are simply unimpeachable. This stalwart experimental rock collective have been fearlessly doing things their own way for nearly 20 years, issuing relentless albums & touring the earth , renowned both for their integrity and intensity. Han Bennink may very well be the most accomplished, versatile & charismatic percussionist to emerge from the temperate hotbed of '60's Euro free jazz. The Laughing Owl also is the first of two albums featuring Terrie Ex performing with his fellow countrymen; Hef, due out this Fall (Atavistic 130CD), showcases Terrie & stellar reedsman Ab Baars. These releases will be followed up with more like-minded issues on Atavistic, from duos such as Swedish sax kingpin Mats Gustafsson & Chicago sound sculptor Lou Mallozzi."

Artist:	SPACEWAYS INC.
Title:	Version Soul
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 132CD

"Spaceways Inc. was spawned over a number of years in a series of songbook projects of saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark, often with Bostonian drummer Curt Newton, including ones centered on music by outerspace ensemble jazz chameleon Sun Ra and heavy funk pioneer George Clinton. Spaceways' first CD documented that hard-line dichotomous approach; on Version Soul the trio investigates middle ground, filling out the spectrum on originals by Vandermark and McBride that navigate various funks, souls, reggaes, dubs, jazzes, frees, and in-betweens, all treated with intelligence and passion."

Artist:	POEM ROCKET
Title:	Invasion!
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 133CD

"Poem Rocket principals Michael Peters & Sandra Gardner have returned after a multi-year hiatus since the release of their critically-acclaimed Atavistic debut, Psychogeography -- emerging to offer the world a glimpse of their own Invasion! Or, put another way, this is an incredibly sophisticated, expansive and densely layered double-album worthy of your full attention. Invasion! is a truly distinctive, completely realized album. A musical statement thoughtful & powerful enough to increase one's existential comfort zone. This needs to find its way to those who can actually hear it 'out there.'"

Artist:	BROKAW, CHRIS
Title:	Red Cities
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 134CD

"Red Cities, Chris' solo debut. It's both organic & deliberate, epic & detailed, part spaghetti western & part road flick -- all masterfully delivered to your auditory canals by a truly gifted multi-instrumentalist. Kindred spirits and reference points include Calexico (sans South of the Border vibe), Pinetop Seven & Giant Sand (sans vocals), and even late-period Savage Republic. The mammoth sheets of guitar texture, powerful drumming & intricate elements that provide the foundation for Red Cities are simply a pleasure to hear; these are big, bad-assed desperado noir numbers done right..."

Artist:	BOXHEAD ENSEMBLE
Title:	Quartets
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 136CD

"America's only possible answer to God Speed You Black Emperor has delivered their fourth proper album ('99s Niagara Falls EP notwithstanding), and a billowing cloud of phantom sensations it is, indeed. On this voyage, the Ensemble consists of leader Michael Krassner (Lofty Pillars), Jessica Billey (SMOG), Michael Colligan (Pillow), Ryan Hembrey (Edith Frost, ex-Pinetop Seven), Glenn Kotche (Wilco, Jim O'Rourke, Loose Fur), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Terminal 4, Br�tzmann Tentet, Concertina Wire), and Scott Tuma. An ethereal, drifting work in the spirit of the Dutch Harbor Soundtrack, The Last Place To Go & Two Brothers, Quartets also features music from the Ensemble's contributions to the HBO Film The Smashing Machine. What began in 1996 as an experimental coalition assembled to generate a film soundtrack has long since become a recurring spectral presence in our listening lives. We like to think of the Boxhead Ensemble as a ghost ship, adrift in an endless sea of inspiration & freedom thankfully washing ashore every couple years... conjuring their otherworldly sounds for us, making music that refuses to be tied to any genre, place, or time."

Artist:	VANDERMARK 5, THE
Title:	Free Jazz Classics Vols. 1 & 2
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 137CD

"Chicago's broadest shoulders present a nice-price double-CD reissue of their very sought-after and critically acclaimed Free Jazz Classics discs. Originally issued as limited edition bonus discs with the V5's last two albums Burn The Incline (ALP121CD)& Acoustic Machine (ALP128CD), jazz legends Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Carla Bley, Joe McPhee, Lester Bowie, Eric Dolphy, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Frank Wright, Jimmy Guiffre, Julius Hemphill & Don Cherry get paid their due respect- as only The Vandermark 5 can."

Artist:	LONBERG-HOLM/GLENN KOTCHE/JASON ROEBKE, FRED
Title:	A Valentine For Fred Katz
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 139CD

"For a jazz cellist, there aren't so many possible heroes on the instrument. Fortunately, there's Fred Katz. Not only as a cellist- but as composer and arranger too, Katz is worthy of accolades and acolytes. He studied with old master Pablo Casals and played piano behind various big-name crooners at the start of the '50s, but soon Katz made his decisive move into the Chico Hamilton Quintet, where he had a chance to work with multiple reed visionary Eric Dolphy and guitarist Jim Hall. Fellow cellist and fellow Frederick -- Chicagoan Fred Lonberg-Holm set out a few years ago to pay homage to the gloriously cool Mr. Katz. Recruiting ultra-sensitive drummer Glenn Kotche and adaptable bassist Jason Roebke, Lonberg-Holm arranged a varied set of Katz's music, as well as some pieces familiar from his records."

Artist:	VANDERMARK 5, THE
Title:	Airports For Light
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 140CD

"The Vandermark 5's first studio album in two years (and the first waxed with drummer Tim Daisy) further integrates and resolves the potent musical ideas & structural complexities that surfaced on their previous effort, 2001's experimental Acoustic Machine. Superbly saturated to 2" analog by Shellac's Bob Weston (also at the helm on Spaceways Inc.'s recent Version Soul album), Airports For Light trades in a more palpable, effortless swing than past V5 efforts. Our favorite standard bearers' mastery over their own post-modern ballads has dramatically increased as well, providing a more confident command of the 'quieter' moments & myriad compositional challenges."

Artist:	BRIDE OF NO NO
Title:	Bride Of No No
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 141CD

"Azita's Bride Of No No have delivered their magnum opus to date with this, their untitled second album. Their deconstructive sonic stance now collides head-on with their newly discovered (and surprisingly overt) desire to atonally hook you into senseless submission. A quick history lesson, redux: Revered authentics of Chicago's mid-90's 'NOW Wave' scene, The Scissor Girls made what some would consider to be the ultimate upstart school musical statement. In the hearts and minds of many -- including The New York Fucking Times, the Scissor Girls are held in similar esteem to legends such as The Slits, Au Pairs, Mars and The Contortions. As with all the best musical collectives, their time would be very short before calling it a day. Fast forward to 1999: an atonal phoenix rises from the ashes -- and slowly, imperceptibly, clandestinely -- and Bride Of No No is born. Their 2001 Atavistic debut, B.O.N.N. Apetit! won rave reviews with their gauze-shrouded 'uniforms' and the record's strangely discordant yet compelling riffs."

Artist:	FLESH EATERS, THE
Title:	Miss Muerte
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 142CD

"By my count, Miss Muerte, is the thirteenth record by the Flesh Eaters. And it is probably performed by what is the thirteenth (at least) version of this legendary group. Initially formed in the dawn of the Los Angeles punk boom by writer/film-maker/producer, Chris Desjardins, the Flesh Eaters have been an on-again-off-again venue for his brain-devouring words and music since 1977. Several of the tunes on Miss Muerte are used in the new film that Chris wrote and directed, I Pass for Human. And the use of the title song as both intro and outro suggests that the album has a narrative trajectory. But that's a red fucking herring. The songs here may be in part related to the film, but they are really just great extensions of the music that the Flesheaters began laying down in the in mid '80s, when they started allowing influences like the UA-era Flamin' Groovies and Exile-period Stones to mix with their own glorious street raunch." --Byron Coley

Artist:	FLESH EATERS, THE
Title:	No Questions Asked
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 143CD

A complete reissue of the long out-of-print debut release by '70's L.A. punk icons, The Flesh Eaters. Featuring performances by members of X (John Doe, Exene Cervenka & DJ Bonebrake), our No Questions Asked reissue also includes 10 bonus tracks & deluxe artwork. "Of all the great bands that the Los Angeles underground produced in the latter half of the 1970s, none were more corrosively poetic, more explosively visionary than the Germs and The Flesh Eaters. The Germs' story has been well-documented previously, and their back catalogue has been easily graspable. But due to the vagaries of history and taste and fate, the major early recordings of the Flesh Eaters have been largely unavailable for many years; a cultural wrong that is finally being righted by this excellent package. The lyrics are wonderful bleeding collages of B-movie dementia, street crime, Mexican Catholicism and Dionysian punk spurt poetics. The vocals are powerful cat-scratched patterns of night-ripping fear, huge bursts of post-glottal raunch-vomit and cascades of pure and toxic love. The music is amazing. Just as The Fall (and somewhat later, The Birthday Party) took basic punk dynamics into whole new corridors of rhythmic/dynamic gloom, so do the Flesh Eaters. This is a potent combination. ...here is the meat that lies at the beginning of the Flesh Eaters' trail." --Byron Coley

Artist:	FLESH EATERS, THE
Title:	A Hard Road to Follow
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 144CD

"A complete reissue of the long out-of-print masterpiece, and 4th release by '70's L.A. punk icons, The Flesh Eaters. Atavistic's Hard Road To Follow reissue (original release: 1983) also includes 5 bonus tracks & deluxe artwork in an oversize lyric booklet.. The band's fourth corrosive masterpiece in as many years, Hard Road is the best evidence of a band that had achieved a still unequalled massiveness of sound. For my money, this particular version of the Flesh Eaters represents the greatest rock band ever. They were it. Their live shows (of which I missed only two or three) were uniformly mind-melting, and while the records they left cannot convey everything that the Flesh Eaters were, they remain amongst the best albums ever." -- Byron Coley.

Artist:	D./DIVINE HORSEMAN, CHRIS
Title:	Time Stands Still
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	ALP 145CD

A complete reissue of Chris D.'s first post-Flesh Eaters album, featuring performances by members of X, The Cramps, The Gun Club, Green On Red and Tex & The Horseheads. Atavistic's Time Stands Still reissue also includes 5 bonus tracks & deluxe artwork in an oversize lyric booklet. "Time Stands Still was a goddamn monolith of a record when it was first released, back in 1984. Two decades later, it sounds even better. By the point we've reached in the 21st Century, no one is surprised by the sounds of acoustic music emerging directly from the maw of punk, but 20 years ago that wasn't the case. And Time Stands Still was an anomalous waft from one of the greatest punk maws ever. This is as close as we're ever coming to hearing the naked soul of Chris D. And for anyone who believes (as I do) that Chris is one of the greatest singers and songwriters of our era, Time Stands Still is a fucking stone." -- Byron Coley.

Artist:	RANALDO/WILLIAM HOOKER/ROGER MILLER, LEE
Title:	Out Trios Volume One: Monsoon
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 146CD

"The gorgeously powerful debut release in Atavistic's new Out Trios Series features Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Roger Miller (Mission Of Burma/Binary System) and NYC free jazz legend William Hooker -- summitting at NYC's Knitting Factory. Massive extraterrestrial waves of sound crest, trough, collide & coalesce -- making for some truly exhilarating, interplanetary music. With Ranaldo on guitar, Miller on keys & Hooker behind the kit, the textural essence of each player's style emerges -- creating a simultaneously new, yet familiar listening experience for those previously acquainted. Monsoon lives up to it's name: a tsunami has been unleashed by this �ber power trio, captured live to analog, and mastered by Ace of Hearts label mogul Rick Harte -- well regarded for his production expertise."

Artist:	CLINE/ANDREA PARKINS/TOM RAINEY, NELS
Title:	Out Trios Volume Three
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 148CD

"The third volume in Atavistic's Out Trios Series aligns L.A.-based guitar genius Nels Cline (Wilco), NYC keyboard/accordion avatar Andrea Parkins and heavy session percussionist Tom Rainey, captured live at Tonic in NYC. Atavistic's Out Trios Series is dedicated exclusively to issuing the most captivating instrumental music available -- as deployed within the context, structure & constraints of the trio format. The Series is an open-ended experiment in freedom, interaction & sonic architecture."

Artist:	VANDERMARK 5, THE
Title:	Elements of Style, Exercises in Surprise
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 150CD

"The new V5 album, Elements Of Style is largely concerned with scale -- and is available ONLY in size XXL. Chicago's (and perhaps America's) most powerful new jazz quintet have created an array of musical themes & structures destined to blow the roof off the/your house, deployed using a superb balance of post-bop & avant-garde materials. Ken Vandermark's premiere project has been touring the planet relentlessly, and has never sounded more complete or sublime. The Vandermark 5's inherent promise to build a spectacular musical bridge between vanguard & traditional forms has been realized with the release of Elements Of Style."

Artist:	JARBOE
Title:	Thirteen Masks
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 152CD

"A definitive reissue Jarboe's out-of-print '91 debut album, Thirteen Masks -- remastered with three bonus tracks, presented in an oversized 16-page booklet, and featuring performances by Michael Gira, Roli Mossiman & Norman Westberg (SWANS), J.G. 'Foetus' Thirlwell & Larry Seven. Thirteen Maskssoars through a number of styles from nightclub jazz, hypno trance & IDM- while simultaneously evoking the dark essence with which she imbues to her all art & music. The first in a series of four deluxe reissues for Jarboe on Atavistic."

Artist:	JARBOE & LARY SEVEN
Title:	Beautiful People Ltd.
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 153CD

"A definitive reissue Jarboe's out-of-print '93 album: remastered, with 6 bonus tracks, presented in an oversized six-color, 16-page booklet. Beautiful People Ltd. is the second in a series of four deluxe reissues for Jarboe on Atavistic. Jarboe's solo work lays bare her desire to be a diva. If Thirteen Maskswas an artistic step forward, Beautiful People Ltd. -- Jarboe's duo with multi-instrumentalist Lary Seven is a further stride. Jarboe is at her freest, trilling though a collection of shimmery, off-kilter pop songs and sitar, vibes, and irony come together to create an evil, post-lounge atmosphere that doesn't have to yell to get your attention. Even the most Skin-like sounding tracks, such as 'Liquid B�b� Psychedelia,' receive gentle, lighter treatments."

Artist:	JARBOE
Title:	Anhedoniac
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 154CD

"A deluxe reissue of Jarboe's limited-edition private press '98 album: remastered, with 3 bonus tracks, presented in an oversized six-color, 16-page booklet, replete with exclusive photos by Richard Kern; Anhedoniac is the third reissue in Atavistic's series for the avant-auteur/ex-Swans/chanteuse. Anhedoniac is Jarboe's 3rd solo album, the first since 1995's Sacrificial Cake; like that album, this one is quite varied musically: quiet acoustic guitar, sound atmospheres (Panasonic mixed 'Panasonic in Red Dirt'; Mark Spybey's work graces 'Forever'), bell-like tones, manic samples, slow grinding guitars. Some tracks are quiet and sparse, some are harsh somewhat like early 80's Swans; the music seems more similar to Sacrificial Cake than Swans, but this album has more of a raw sound & feel."

Artist:	JARBOE
Title:	A Mystery of Faith
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 155CD

Subtitle: Unreleased Pieces: Swans + World of Skin. "A double-CD packed with previously unreleased material from Swans and World Of Skin with Jarboe on lead vocals. Mystery of Faith offers over 140 minutes of prime material from 1986-1997 and features humorous, obscure and sometimes revealing personal recordings of Swans performances rehearsals, sound checks & more. A completely distinctive take on one of the great avant-garde rock bands of all time and a must-have historical document for all Swans fans."

Artist:	BENDIAN'S INTERZONE, GREGG
Title:	Gregg Bendian's Interzone
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 156CD

"Remastered reissue of Interzone's self-titled debut release is replete with over 12 minutes of previously unreleased bonus material in a new package with images by digital maven Bill Elsworth. Featuring uber-percussionist/ leader Gregg Bendian and The Brothers Cline (Nels & Alex, that is...)- breakthrough prog-jazz never sounded better. From Gregg's liner notes: "Growing up in New Jersey during the 1970's I was exposed to a great many British progressive bands. Compositionally, the most important of these bands, by far, was Gentle Giant. Their Free Hand (1975) record changed my ears for life. In Gentle Giant's complex brand of chamber music, I heard for the first time (quite unwittingly) such diverse elements as counterpoint, hocketing, atonality, polytonality, polymetrics, metric modulation, rhythmic displacement, multi-instrumentalism and of course, percussion as a featured voice -- all vital areas of contemporary composition which I would later study seriously as a musician. Twenty years hence, while making a rediscovery and extended examination of their work, I realize what a profound and lasting effect their music and musicianship has had on my own approach to the composition/band concept relationship. This recording is dedicated to the core members of Giant (Kerry Minnear, Derek Shulman, Ray Shulman, Gary Green & John Weathers) with much admiration, respect and gratitude."

Artist:	LUNCH, LYDIA
Title:	Smoke in the Shadows
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 157CD

"New studio recordings from the Queen of Siam! Most decidedly flavored in her hard-boiled, post-mod Raymond Chandler style, but running an eclectic gamut -- with assistance channelling beats, diseased invectives, word projectiles & twisted cabaret noir and beyond from the Anubian Lights production team. Smoke in the Shadows delivers serious 'Night Music', featuring performances & contributions by Nels &Alex Cline, Carla Bozulich, Vinny Golia, Terry Edwards & NYC avatar Adele Bertei."

Artist:	ROVA::ORKESTROVA
Title:	Electric Ascension
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 159CD

"Massive & intense in-studio interpretation of John Coltrane's masterwork, Ascension, as performed by an all-star ensemble featuring The Rova Saxophone Quartet, Nels Cline (Wilco & more), guitar legend Fred Frith, Ikue Mori (formerly of No New York stars DNA), turntable wizard Otomo Yoshihide, plus other stellar guests.; "I like to think that, if Coltrane were still alive and still as adventurous, would have organized a similar band to play this piece in 2003 -- and I definitely believe that what we have here on record could never have been made 40 years ago. Both technologically and conceptually, this performance couldn't have happened. Why I say that may be obvious to some, but for those of you who think I'm dissing Coltrane, Sanders, et al., let me explain: 1965 was very much in the early stages of what is usually called 'free jazz', but what I think of as 'structured improvisation' (a more all-encompassing term). At that time, asking seven wind players, two basses, a drummer, and a pianist to come together and blow collectively, with no rehearsal, was more than ground-breaking. Almost none of these artists had had that experience before. And MUCH more importantly, as far as I know, neither had almost anyone else. And certainly there were virtually no recordings to study. Simply put: the entire concept of free improvisation was barely an idea in anyone's mind. Forty years later, the concept is not only a known quantity, but it's been absorbed, analyzed, worked on, thought about, discussed, 'improved.' So it only follows that we'd be able to take Coltrane's beautiful piece and intuit implications for it that the original sound-explorers could not have realized at that time -- the first time... the respect everyone has for the composer, for the other musicians involved, and for the form called 'structured improvisation' makes the music what it is. We are indebted to John Coltrane (and other great artists) for inspiring us to engage uncompromisingly in the risky business of creativity." -- Larry Ochs.

Artist:	SOUND IN ACTION TRIO
Title:	Gate
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 160CD

"Robert Barry (legendary core member of Sun Ra's Arkestra circa 1950s/'60s), Ken Vandermark (V5/Spaceways Inc./ B61/ (((Powerhouse Sound))), and Tim Daisy (V5/ Rempis Percussion Trio/Triage) dig deep and find the spirit willing- and no resistance while conjuring their second studio effort as SIA. Superb homages and collages to and by Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Dotson/Ra, Ed Blackwell -- and Herbie Nichols' sublime 'House Party Starting' complete & compliment five SIA originals on Gate... so dig the double-drum vs. reed groove now."

Artist:	GUSH
Title:	Norrk�ping
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 161CD

"Elegant, masterful trio recordings from one of Sweden's national living treasures. Mats Gustafsson (reeds), Sten Sandell (piano) and Raymond Strid (drums) set course for a sublime oblivion, driven by this longstanding (ca. 1988) group's unique brand of instrumental telepathy. For those previously acquainted with Mr. Gustafsson's power-soul-honk in such projects and collaborations with The Br�tzmann Tentet, Sonore, The Thing (w/ Joe McPhee), HIDROS 3 (w/ Sonic Youth), Jim O'Rourke, David Grubbs, John Corbett & Ken Vandermark: another dimension of his estimable facility is on full display here, conjuring empathic textures within & without Sandell's world-class keystrokes and Strid's titanic structures. Truly scintillating."

Artist:	GUSTAFSSON & DAVID STACKEN�S, MATS
Title:	Mountain Blues from Sweden
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 163CD

"Listening to the music on this album by Mats and David, and considering its reference to the Blues (in title at least), I am left to ponder how strongly Black American Blues music is ingrained into the cultural DNA of even a middle-aged, white, middle-class citizen of the United States. Also I am forced to realize how foreign those methods of expression might seem to artists born into European history. Perhaps this subconscious content of American Blues is as significant a component in the difference between the sound of American improvised music and its European counterpart as the issue of 'time.' So I think that this set of pieces is about a feeling, if it is meant to be connected to the Blues. And the feeling here is bordered by the somber baritone hymn that begins and ends the album." -- Ken Vandermark.

Artist:	LONBERG-HOLM, FRED
Title:	Other Valentines
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 165CD

"The FLH Trio returns with their second album for Atavistic: a beautifully conceived, bittersweet follow-up volume-and companion piece to A Valentine For Fred Katz. On Other Valentines, the Trio weaves ten rich tapestries from several luminary songwriters' works: Sun Ra, Syd Barrett, Jeff Tweedy, Gil Scott-Heron, Chan 'Cat Power' Marshall are each given a timeless and virtuosic treatment. Few albums released in this era have kindled more gentle introspection -- or been as aptly titled. Playful yet poignant, Other Valentines is a lovely reflection of Mr. Lonberg-Holm's personality, interests & obsessions."

Artist:	JARBOE
Title:	The Men Album
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	ALP 167CD

"Six years in the making, Jarboe's The Men Album project is finally revealed via a twenty track double-CD, showcasing the impressive range of her interests & artistry. The Men Album brings together an eclectic global roster of artists from diverse musical backgrounds whose only commonality, for the most part, is Jarboe herself. Beyond the music, The Men Album examines the dreams of a woman and the exploration therein of her identity as seen through the 'masculine gaze.' Featured artists include veteran performers: Blixa Bargeld, Alan Sparhawk, Jim Thirlwell, Edward Kaspel, David Torn, Chris Connelly, David J, Mika Vainio, and many more collaborators."

Artist:	ZU/MATS GUSTAFSSON
Title:	How to Raise an Ox
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 168CD

"Recall if you will, the triumphant out-funk of Radiale; perhaps it was your earliest contact with the powerhouse known as Zu, as they collided head-on with Chicago's least-seen (yet best) bad-ass trio, Spaceways Inc. Then: if you will, ponder the sublime soul-power-Gush of Sir Mats Gustafsson, one of the leading lights & practitioners of modern-era saxophone endeavor. Now: and only if you can without too much duress and/or salivation: contemplate the ensuing hi-fi, brain-numbing hypno-skronk implosion when these Italian stallions meet the Blue Swede in a living fight to the death."

Artist:	FARINA/LUTHER GRAY/NATE MCBRIDE, GEOFF
Title:	Out Trios Volume Four: Almanac
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 171CD

"The fourth volume in Atavistic's Out Trios Series aligns Beantown-via Chicago co-conspirators Geoff Farina (Karate), Nate McBride (Spaceways Inc./Bridge61/(((Powerhouse Sound))) & Luther Gray. A Yeoman-like commitment, integrity of materials, timeless ideas, and solid uni-body construction produce an audio edifice that we can all lean into with confidence -- in signature 'Out' packaging. Atavistic's Out Trios Series is dedicated exclusively to issuing the most captivating instrumental music available -- as deployed within the context, structure & constraints of the trio format. The Series is an open-ended experiment in freedom, interaction & sonic architecture."

Artist:	BRIDGE 61
Title:	Journal
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 172CD

"Given the logistical hiatus that Spaceways Inc. has found itself occupying, Ken Vandermark was seeking to create another mode of expression for those groove-centric hunks of sound. Ergo: the birth of Bridge 61, featuring KV, Spaceways Inc. bassist Nate McBride, V5/SIA trapman Tim Daisy, and newcomer Jason Stein on bass clarinet. Utilizing its existing histories as a source for new potential in musical exploration, the combination of instruments at Bridge 61's disposal allows them to utilize a startling range of sound and tactics with the material, easily moving from the character of an austere chamber ensemble to that of radical electric noise -- or to a kinetic energy hymn in any given set during a performance. Most importantly, the band makes the connection between these varied aesthetics, giving them a formal sense & structure. With tunes crafted by these stalwarts, and dedications toThis Heat, Jackson Pollock & Sonny Sharrock -- how can Bridge 61 miss?"

Artist:	VANDERMARK 5, THE
Title:	A Discontinuous Line
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 173CD

"The Vandermark 5 deliver on the epic promise of 2005's The Color Of Memory with what may well be their most ambitious compositional effort thus far. A Discontinuous Line presents a remarkable range of dynamic musical ideas and influences processed, as Vandermark fully leverages the vast experience & deep well of talent assembled in The V5's third lineup in their decade-plus existence. Call it what you will... post-bop, avant-garde, neu chamber music, free jazz -- it just doesn't matter any more. What DOES matter is the monolithic edifice that has been so meticulously assembled by America's finest working jazz ensemble: an authenticity of materials, an integrity of concepts, the will to improve -- and the courage to change. Ten years of piledriving musical endeavor has resulted in perhaps The V5's most complex and engaging studio album yet."

Artist:	BOXHEAD ENSEMBLE
Title:	Nocturnes
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 174CD

"The Boxhead Ensemble returns with their fourth proper studio album (fifth in sum) since the inception of the Dutch Harbor project in 1996. The collective's leader Michael Krassner (guitar/organ/FX) joins forces with Fred Lonberg-Holm (Vandermark 5, Terminal 4, Valentine Trio) on cello/harmonica, Frank Rosaly (drums) & Jacob Kolar (prepared piano), generating a meditative aura unlike any other. Nocturnes is a like-minded & appropriately gorgeous follow-up to their Two Brothers and Quartets recordings. What began in as an ad-hoc experimental coalition assembled to generate a lost Alaskan film soundtrack has grown into a familiar yet haunting sonic tapestry, perfectly suited to long drives, private moments and unexamined spaces. The Boxhead Ensemble is a self-propelled Flying Dutchman of a group, adrift in an endless sea of inspiration & freedom, conjuring their otherworldly sounds for us, making music that refuses to be tied to any genre, place, or time."

Artist:	JARBOE
Title:	The Conduit
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 175CD

"A stealthy, haunting follow-up to Jarboe's Men Album masterwork: a full-length, limited tour album co-written & performed by Jarboe & guitarist Nic Le Ban. Also featured are the names & words submitted to Jarboe's 'Living Rumor' subscription list -- a latter day email-art piece consisting of contributions by hundreds of folks from her far-reaching international fan base. Hypno-Immersion via masterful soundscapes: Lightning, piano, guitars & vocals conjure atmospheres of isolating darkness, glowing incandescence & sublime seduction."

Artist:	CORBETT VS. DEMPSEY
Title:	Eye & Ear: Artist - Musician
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 176CD

Originally released as a limited-edition audio companion piece for the Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery's Musician - Artist opening in Chicago, December 3, 2004, Eye & Ear features otherwise unavailable tracks by internationally reknowned artists such as Sun Ra, Peter Br�tzmann, Han Bennink, Michael Snow, Pee Wee Russell & more, ranging from recordings from 1950 to the present. "It's hardly news that artists and musicians are so often one and the same. At one time, to be a well-rounded person of any cultural persuasion meant to be a practicing musician -- and even since the dawn of the more rigorously specialized modernist era, the disciplines of music and visual artmaking have frequently intersected. Consider that composer Arnold Sch�nberg was an outstanding and active painter, or that artist Wassily Kandinsky used the term "improvisation" to describe his own paintings. The Musician - Artist group exhibition assembles a wide-ranging assortment of artwork by musician-artists and artist-musicians, both historical and contemporary, exploring the many ways that passage between the visual and the sonic can serve as a creative catalyst." -- John Corbett

Artist:	POWERHOUSE SOUND
Title:	Oslo/Chicago: Breaks
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 177CD

"(((POWERHOUSE SOUND))) formed in the summer of 2005 -- originally with Ken Vandermark on tenor sax, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten & Nate McBride on basses, Lasse Marhaug on electronics and on drums. Vandermark composed tracks with the idea of building the music from the 'perspective' of the bass instead of the more conventional approach of composition construction, 'from the top down,' as he puts it. 'The three major influences I considered when putting the music together were the rhythmic ideas of James Brown, the dub ideas of Lee Perry and the collage ideas of Public Enemy.'"

Artist:	ZU/NOBUKAZU TAKEMURA
Title:	Identification With The Enemy: A Key To The Underworld
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 178CD

"Our latest selection for 'The Pantheon' -- Zu have once again defied convention in their ongoing, internationally-based collaborative explorations. After teaming with Ken Vandermark's Spaceways Incorporated for Radiale; then the Blue Swede, Mats Gustafsson, for How To Raise An Ox, these Italian out-gods have turned up this time with Thrill Jockey artist DJ Nobukazu Takemura, to produce Identification With The Enemy: A Key To The Underworld. Identification is a genre-splicing adventure, a skin bracing blast of velodromic rhythm, loopadelia, avant-rock & jazz that is sure to be on the tips of la tastemaker's 2007-vintage tongues. This heady brew is wrapped in a superb, signature Scarful-designed digipak, worth the price of admission alone. Identification equals Bulletproof Sonic Action."

Artist:	LONDBERG-HOLM TRIO, FRED
Title:	Terminal Valentine
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 180CD

"Chicago's Renaissance man Non-Pareil, Fred Lonberg-Holm and his Trio return with Terminal Valentine, their third proper studio album for Atavistic. With the sympathetically beatific rhythm section of Jason Roebke (bass) & Frank Rosaly (drums), FLH pushes the Trio into a more experimental direction -- yet somehow their signature creation of warmth and intimacy still commands the proceedings. Trump l'oeil treats, an homage to Gainsbourg & props to the real old school complete the atmosphere. We may not have made the Valentine's Day release date, but a dose of Terminal Valentine is certainly good for the restless heart -- any day of the year."

Artist:	HARNETTY, BRIAN
Title:	American Winter
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 181CD

"American Winter = holler musics woven with archival field/radio recordings, meeting the 21st century. The Berea College (Kentucky) Sound Archives holds non-commercial recordings documenting more than 75 years of Appalachian history and culture. In late 2005, the Berea College Appalachian Music Fellowship Program was made possible by a grant from the Anne Ray Charitable Trust, established by the late Margaret Anne Cargill. The Fellowship program supports scholarly research in Berea's collections of traditional music." "Brian Harnetty was among the first Appalachian Music Fellows. Initially overwhelmed by the collection's richness, he quickly immersed himself in field recordings, radio programs, and oral history interviews. We conversed daily about what he'd heard, the concept of tradition, and collections as a type of composition. The resulting pieces take the known, unknown, and forgotten, reworking them into new cloth and exposing new layers of humanity." --John H. Bondurant, Sound Preservation Archivist, Berea College

Artist:	OCHS/SAX & DRUMMING CORE, LARRY
Title:	Out Trios Volume Five: Up From Under
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 182CD

"The fifth installment in Atavistic's Out Trios series configures a triad of West Coast heavies on sax & double-drums: Larry Ochs (Rova/Orkestrova), Scott Amendola (Nels Cline Singers & more); and Don Robinson (Cecil Taylor (!), Wadada Leo Smith, George Lewis, Raphe Malik & Glenn Spearman). With absolutely lovely cover art by Emilie Clark & photos by Scott Campbell, Out Trios Volume Five kicks hard, while maintaining an omniscient cool. Other releases in the Out Trios series feature groupings such as Lee Ranaldo/Roger Miller/William Hooker; Jeff Parker/Kevin Drumm/Michael Zerang; Nels Cline/Andrea Parkins/Tom Rainey and Geoff Farina/Luther Gray/Nate McBride. Atavistic's Out Trios series is dedicated exclusively to issuing the most captivating instrumental music available -- as deployed within the context, structure & constraints of the trio format. The series is an open-ended experiment in freedom, interaction & sonic architecture."

Artist:	FIRE ROOM
Title:	Broken Music
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 183CD

"A tempest of e-jazz-noise erupts on the Atavistic debut from Fire Room, a new project between longtime collaborators Ken Vandermark, Lasse Marhaug & Paal Nilssen-Love. As core members of the initial lineup of (((Powerhouse Sound))) -- as well as an array of other adventurous small & large groups -- these cats know each other well. The telepathic vibe necessary to make free music really work is tested & expanded upon throughout Broken Music -- amplified literally AND figuratively by Marhaug's penchant for darker -- yet still explosive -- forays on a gamut of electronic gear. Users are currently invited to investigate the outer reaches of both jazz & electronic frontiers simultaneously with Fire Room."

Artist:	VANDERMARK 5, THE
Title:	Beat Reader
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 184CD

"KV and Chicago's finest fivesome once again team up with Bob Weston to notch out Beat Reader, the quintet's 12th album for Atavistic over the course of the last decade-plus. Inasmuch as one may contemplate the recorded works of Sonic Youth as a genre unto itself, The V5 may now lay claim to such a distinction: existing simultaneously inside AND outside the realm of jazz. Vandermark's compositions have recently become even more guided by his respect for (and sonic interpretations of) the traditional arts."

Artist:	BROTZMANN/PEETER UUSKYLA DUO, PETER
Title:	Born Broke
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 185CD

"Peter & Peeter have once again joined spirits and forces, picking up where their trio with Peter Friis-Nielsen left off -- this time as a reeds-n'-drums duo delivering a blowout double-CD -- whose only remote competition in the field understandably comes from Messrs. Vandermark & Nilssen-Love's two-man implosion unit, Dual Pleasure. A fresh double-dose of soul-purge from free men, presented in a Br�tz art-brute package. From Uuskyla's liner notes: 'The liferoad of the one life you have. Been fighting all the time for playing untouchable sounds of simple music. My definition of beauty. Untouchable, therefore powerful, simple, therefore universal, for everyone. But you are notable to keep it only yourself, that's the strength. No amplification, not even monitor speakers or headphones needed for this duo. The punch and the scream -- the foundation of natural music-making!'"

Artist:	BROTZMANN & FRED LONBERG-HOLM, PETER
Title:	The Brain Of The Dog In Section
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 186CD

"Peaked-out duo recordings from one of the founders of the form and his ever adventurous, cello-torque-ing prot�g�. Recorded live in November 2007 at Chicago's famed Hideout destination, Br� and brother FLH combine for the first time ever in this penultimately intimate configuration. Although 'Braindog' (as we affectionately refer to these hypnotic tones around here) was recorded in an ultra-industrial urban warehouse district, the resulting music is �ber-organic, almost onomotopaeic at points. Certainly, fans of Schwarzwaldfahrt -- Br�tzmann and Bennink's now classic free-jazz camping trip deep into Germany's Black Forest -- are strongly urged to check into this seminal blast."

Artist:	FULL BLAST
Title:	Black Hole
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 187CD

"To say (Full Blast) is a powerhouse is an understatement. These three men don't just rattle the house, they bring it down. They don't simply shake the eardrums, they pierce them right through. They don't mess around with subtleties... they electrify the air with the sound of music that is here and now." -Tom Sekowski, Gazeta. "Shades of Last Exit (sans guitar) are evident, and Full Blast also frequently conjures the essence of Brotzmann's landmark early free recording Machine Gun in it's visceral intensity. Herr Br� himself refers to Full Blast as 'The Trio.' Black Hole lives up to its moniker -- and as such, is not recommended for the faint of heart. And after sensational performances at Brotzfest Tokyo and the hallowed Berlin & London Jazz Festivals, more high voltage is undoubtedly on the way."

Artist:	WREKMEISTER HARMONIES
Title:	Recordings Made In Public Spaces Volume One
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD/DVD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 188CD

"Chicago-based sound artist J.R. Robinson has been creating live, ambient tonefields in museums around the US and Europe over the past two years -- including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Pompidou Center in Paris and The Art Center Berlin. Robinson has injected these recordings into collaborations with some like-minded heavy hitters in the noise, post-rock and jazz worlds such as David Yow (Jesus Lizard/Scratch Acid), Mark Shippy & Pat Samson (US Maple), Azita Youssefi, John Herndon & Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Keefe Jackson, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark. The end result (dubbed Wrekmeister Harmonies), is a distinctive hybrid of sound art and avant-garde musics, evoking the essences & influences of masterworks like Joe McPhee's Nation Time, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and the sound collages of Stockhausen. Recordings Made In Public Spaces Volume One is the debut collection of these recordings, and is presented as a CD+DVD double-disc release."

Artist:	MY CAT IS AN ALIEN/ENORE ZAFFIRI
Title:	Through The Magnifying Glass Of Tomorrow
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD/DVD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 189CD

"Clandestine auteurs the Opalio Brothers (aka My Cat Is An Alien) have deftly sprinkled our solar system with their beautifully fragile, arcane soundscape/tracks via their own Opax label, as well as multimedia collaborations with vanguards such as Sonic Youth, Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Text Of Light, Jim O'Rourke, Mats Gustafsson, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Christina Carter Of Charalambides, Jackie- O Motherfucker & Black Magic Disco --- and even have been commissioned to design a T-shirt for The Wire. Atavistic is most definitely thrilled to have the pleasure of releasing Through The Magnifying Glass Of Tomorrow, a freshly-minted collaboration with one of the pioneers of radical Italian electronic music, Enore Zaffiri. Mr. Zaffiri, composer and founder of the legendary Smet (Studio di Musica Elettronica di Torino) in 1964, is 80 years old and has been a 'reclused' artist for decades. After meeting Maurizio and Roberto, he decided to set up a collaborative project with them. Their recordings from the Western Alps of Bella Italia, Through The Magnifying Glass, a CD+DVD release running over two hours, is the haunting result from the gathering of these fellow musical cosmonauts." DVD contents: Robert Opalio's dual film "Light_Earth_Blue_Silver" (soundtrack by My Cat Is An Alien, 37 minutes, 4:3, color stereo) and Enore Zaffiri's video painting "Trasparenze" (soundtrack by Enore Zaffiri, 48 minutes, 4:3, color, stereo).

Artist:	HARNETTY WITH BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY, BRIAN
Title:	Silent City
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 190CD

"Brian Harnetty is an Ohio-based musician, educator and artist, whose work involves typically overlooked elements of sound. Many of his pieces transform found materials -- including field recordings, transcriptions, and historic recordings into personal and often socio-cultural worlds. His music and installations have been performed and exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. Silent City is the follow-up to his incredible '07 work American Winter (ALP 180CD), which is rooted in recordings and transcriptions made available to Brian through a residency with the Appalachian Folk Archive (Berea, KY). The result often feels like a gently compelling collision of pure, real-deal 'Holler Music' and the deftness of Morton Feldman. Very much in a kindred-spirit, Silent City features Will Oldham (Palace Brothers, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Boxhead Ensemble) on vocals, and is a fascinating, compelling collaboration that mixes the last three centuries into one beautifully haunting, cryptic flow of idea-sound."

Artist:	FAUZ'T
Title:	From The Frozen South
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 192CD

"Faust were certainly among the leaders of Germany's Krautrock movement back in the early '70s. Ensconced in 'The Pantheon' forever as truly visionary artists, their early records still sound light-years ahead of their time 30+ years later. From The Frozen South features original Faust mainman Hans Joachim Irmler joining forces with the iconic 'scape artist/percussionist Z'EV at Faust Studios. The topologically-charged results range from spacious and soothing, through full-on digital brutality; each piece is subtly tinged with both artist's distinct and respective take on the out-rock they helped create. Frozen South offers a glacial essence of the sounds these two legends have created and incorporated over the last 30 years, plus new ideas and experiments -- each distilled through a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration. An incredible sonic journey made by two of the genre's pioneers to be sure; a monument to the avant garde, perhaps... but steadfastly, as always: of and for the People!"

Artist:	KINK GONG
Title:	Electronic World
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 194CD

"After recording the indigenous musics of countless Asian villages and releasing over 50 CD-Rs of these documents on his own label, Laurent Jeanneau debuts his own Kink Gong electro project on Atavistic!" "Since 1995 I am involved in 2 complementary activities -- first recording ethnic minority music, mostly in southeast Asia (India, Tanzania, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China); and second, composing electronic music that includes or transforms those recordings. Every country has a different context, so also my approach is different -- depending on how much time I spend, how close I am with the people, the degree of acculturation, how easy it is to find musicians, the political situation, who I am working with. In many cases, I seem to be the first one to record those musicians; I am aware of this exclusive dimension, but this is not essential. I won't pretend that I'm doing it for saving endangered cultures, nowadays everyone is using those words..." -LJ, 2009

Artist:	MCPHEE, JOE
Title:	Nation Time
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 201CD

Atavistic announces a new subsidiary reissue line: The Unheard Music Series, curated by John Corbett. "Joe McPhee's solo album, Tenor literally changed my life. The recording (one of his first for Hat Hut, in September 1976) displayed his unique ability to integrate unconventional sounds and extended techniques with pure melodicism, and it permanently altered my perspective on what the saxophone could do and what music could be. Nation Time was recorded six years earlier, but ideas regarding the integration of means and methods were already at the forefront of McPhee's approach to improvisation. For this concert on December 12, 1970 (the other half of which was released in 1975 as the first Hat Hut LP, Black Magic Man), Joe McPhee mapped out a stylistically expansive set list, one that embraced methods as diverse as those developed by New Thing-era Archie Shepp, late 60s Sun Ra and Art Ensemble of Chicago, Grant Green, Cecil Taylor (Candid period), & Sonny Rollins. He and his band, through vision and work, made these various approaches their own. This set represents real 'free jazz' -- the freedom to pursue the sounds and rhythms that inspire players to improvise with individual vitality and passion, no matter what different kinds of music are represented." -- Ken Vandermark.

Artist:	MOUNT EVEREST TRIO
Title:	Waves From Albert Ayler
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 202CD

Reissue of a rare album from the Swedish improvisation underground, first released in 1975 on the LIM (Live Improvised Music) label (with three bonus tracks added, recorded in 1977). Brought to our current attention by contemporary Swedish improvisor Mats Gustafsson. The Mount Everest Trio is: Gilbert Holmstr�m (alto, tenor sax), Kjell Jansson (bass) & Conny Sj�kvist (drums). "I first came into contact with the music of Gilbert Holmstr�m through Waves From Albert Ayler, and in my personal universe this record still holds its place as one of the strongest examples of creative music ever to be made in good old Sweden. I think that Mount Everest creates a very positive, beautiful, living improvised music, vibrating with total dedication and great spirit." -- Mats Gustafsson, Gustavsberg.

Artist:	HAL RUSSELL'S CHEMICAL FEAST
Title:	Elixir (1979)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 203CD

"By the time he made his first commercially released LP with the NRG Ensemble in 1981, Hal Russell had already spent the better part of a decade experimenting with different sidemen, formations and instrumentation. Russell started leading bands while in living in Florida at the tail end of the '60s, and on his return to Chicago he set out to form an ideal working unit. Russell toughed out the '70s without making a record, but he didn't refrain from documenting the shifting lineups and evolving musical ideas along the way. In fact, when he died, he left a cache of hundreds of recordings in the care of his right-hand man, saxophonist Mars Williams. These extraordinary tapes provide an incomplete yet fascinating survey of Russell's pre-NRG career (as well as the lesser known NRG years) -- and over time, the Unheard Music Series intends to make the most arresting and significant of these available to the public. We commence the Hal Russell Archive miniseries with this single concert, recorded informally on March 5, 1979, at Elixir Gallery -- a storefront art space on North Clark Street."

Artist:	BROTZMANN, PETER SEXTET & QUARTET
Title:	Nipples
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 205CD

Long awaited reissue of this historic pre-FMP album by Peter Brotzmann. Known to many for it's placement on "The List" (T. Moore's Top Ten list of free jazz artifacts as published in Grand Royal of course), this is one of the most desirable and completely unseen albums in the genre of modern improvisation. Recorded April 18/24, 1969 and released on the Calig-Verlag label. "Simply put, Nipples is one of the rarest and most influential European energy jazz recordings of all time. The incendiary Sextet lineup featured an international cast of musical greats; leader Br�tzmann and bassist Buschi Niebergall (Germany), tenor saxophonist Evan Parker and guitarist Derek Bailey (UK), and pianist Fred Van Hove (Belgum). Virtually everything about Nipples is simply the stuff of legend. The most revered lineup in the history of Euro free jazz got together on only one occasion to record a genre-defining album in the most creative & hallowed of German studios (Conny Plank's), and the result has been out of print for 30 years."

Artist:	BENNINK, HAN
Title:	Nerve Beats
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 206CD

"For those uninitiated, Han Bennink is one of the founding figures of European improvised music; longtime musical partner of Misha Mengelberg; and co-founder of the Instant Composers Pool (ICP). In short, Bennink is one of the most swinging, adventurous people on the planet. Though he's been active since the early '60s, Bennink remains energetic and irrepressible, and certainly qualifies as one of the great solo improvisers of the century -- at times madcap & go-for-broke, other times harrowing, but always a sheer delight. Recorded for Germany's Radio Bremen in 1973, in the period when Bennink was storming Europe in a trio with Peter Brotzmann and Fred Van Hove, Nerve Beats is a great recording never before issued on CD. It comes from a time when Bennink employed a gigantic setup; metal percussion, tons of extra drums, tablas, an early drum-machine, as well as non-percussive instruments like trombone, clarinet, and various impossible-to-describe objects. A 3 track live concert recorded in its entirety at the acoustically ideal Rathaus, Nerve Beats is also the only live document available of Han performing solo at this time, as his early FMP and ICP records are out of print (and decidedly sought after). Nerve Beats has been mastered from the radio session original tapes and sports new handmade cover art by Bennink (also an accomplished visual artist) and a freewheeling period portrait by outstanding photographer Pieter Boersma. Here's Han Bennink alone and at his most expansive, explosive, and wildly imaginative. Hilarious, razor sharp and not to be taken lightly."

Artist:	CUYPERS, LEO
Title:	Heavy Days Are Here Again
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 207CD

"Leo Cuypers, pianist and composer from southern Holland, is one of the great unsung heroes of Dutch creative music -- as a bandleader, solo pianist and member of the first incarnation of the Willem Breuker Kollektief. Heavy Days Are Here Again was a project that brought Bennink and Breuker (who made the first ICP record, New Acoustic Swing Duo together as a twosome back in the 60s) back together after a somewhat fractious split, and reunited Buypers with Breuker as well. Cuypers named the group as an ironic jab at the Ronald Regan 1980 administration's adoption of 'Happy Days Are Here Again' as their campaign music. Heavy Days showcases seven playfully lyrical iconoclastic and totally enthralling compositions by Cuypers, and is the only extant CD of Cuypers' music available. It has been meticulously remastered from the original tapes, and is presented with its original LP artwork."

Artist:	NACHTLUFT
Title:	Belle View I-IV Reissue
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 208CD

"Nachtluft was a Zurich-based trio consisting of Gunter Muller on electronic percussion, Jacques Widmer on acoustic percussion, and Andres Bosshard on a unique cassette machine setup (with speakers distributed around the room), and all three musicians on metal. Self-described as a 'project for two drummers and live electronics in an all-over installation,' they formed in 1986, and went on to make this album, one other LP for Unit, and a Japanese CD. For fans of electronic music, noise rock, post-techno, advanced electronica, sound installation, and free improvisation, this record will come as a startling revelation and powerful manifesto on the glory of enormous electroacoustic sound." The following from Jim O'Rourke's liner notes: "It's hard to believe these recordings are almost 15 years old. Even harder, for me, to believe that I've had the record almost that long. Where does the time go? That's a good question: what happened to the time here? Why does it seem to be so assured in it's progression of events, yet seem completely free of the constraints of them? It doesn't have the feel of improvised music, a good sign. In fact, when I first bought the record, I didn't know it was improvised music at all. I threw it on then as I throw it on now, in confusion. This is group sound. Improvising groups that reach this single-mind unity are rare, and they are all puzzling: AMM's The Crypt has a picture that makes it impossible to tell how the hell they make their sounds; the back cover of Music Improvisation Company looks like they are appearing on Star Search; and now the graphic on the back cover makes me wonder about Nachtluft. They have this extra special awareness of the space they play in (in fact, they've organized concerts happening simultaneously on different continents, on bridges, through satellites). When it comes time for the big collapse the scientists keep talking about, this will be a good last choice for the stereo. Get out your pots and pans."

Artist:	GREGORIO, GUILLERMO
Title:	Otra Musica
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 209CD

"The full title of this landmark collection, Otra Musica: Tape Music, Fluxus & Free Improvisation in Buenos Aires 1963-70, says a tremendous amount this overwhelming package in & of itself. Though he has only recently come to international attention through his recordings for Hatart as a leader and with Franz Koglmann, Argentinean clarinetist and alto saxophonist Guillermo Gregorio had a fascinating earlier artistic incarnation in Buenos Aires. Heretofore totally unknown, these recordings bring to light an incredibly sophisticated sound-world of proto-electronica, Fluxus-oriented performance art and very early free improvised music, all from a virtually secret enclave of South American experimentalism. Sixteen tracks, none ever released before, with various groups including Movimiento M�sica M�s, totally free duets with trumpeter Carlos Miralles from '64, an astounding solo alto piece from the same year. Painstakingly researched and lavishly documented, with an in-depth essay by John Corbett, loads of great photos and reproductions of two of Gregorio's 1960s paintings, Otra Musica: Tape Music, Fluxus & Free Improvisation in Buenos Aires 1963-70 will stand as one of the great archival unearthing of creative music."

Artist:	TCHICAI-SCHWEIZER GROUP
Title:	Willi The Pig
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 210CD

"A tremendous live quartet concert, recorded at the first Willisau Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1975, Willi The Pig features a smoking lineup of Swiss master pianist Irene Schweizer (one of the foundering figures of free music in Europe), elemental Danish saxophonist John Tchicai (who co-led the New York Contemporary Five and recorded with Albert Ayler and John Coltrane), German bassist Buschi Niebergall (who appeared on Peter Br�tzmann's Nipples), and South African drummer Makaya Ntshoko. First released in a hand-silkscreened batch of 500, to commemorate the Swiss festival, this LP has been out of print basically since it was issued, and remains one of the rarest LPs of '70s free jazz. This reissue reproduces the lovely cover, designed by Willisau chief Nicklaus Troxler, in all its shocking pink and silver glory."

Artist:	PETER BROTZMANN GROUP
Title:	Fuck De Boere (1968/70)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 211CD

"Two concert recordings -- never before released, mastered from original radio master tapes-by larger groups led by the German saxophone legend Peter Br�tzmann. Both recorded by the esteemed Hessischer Rundfunk organization at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival, in 1968 and 1970. Two of the most explosive, rivetting pieces of music ever to come out of the European vaults. First: an unheard alternate version of Br�tzmann's groundbreaking Machine Gun, this time with a nine piece group (same as the LP, adding tenor saxophonist Gerd Dudek), recorded three months before the BRO/FMP record was made! A beautiful recording, revealing some heretofore obscure aspects of the composition, it's sure to be a favorite for free jazz fans of any stripe. Second: a 40-minute masterpiece from '70, with a large group featuring three tenors, three trombones, no bassist, Fred van Hove on organ (!), Derek Bailey on guitar and Han Bennink and Sven-Ake Johansson on drums. It's a monumental piece, featuring some of the most extreme Bailey on record (sounding at times like Masayumi Takayanaki from five years later), and tremendous interplay between Br�tz, Evan Parker and Willem Breuker. Dedicated at the time to South African bassist Johnny Dyani, it's a moving poem on forces of oppression and the idea of resistance. This deluxe package includes a12-panel foldout booklet designed by Br�tzmann, including very personal liner notes by him; two beautiful period photographs (the waft of late '60's freedom off these is utterly exhilarating and undeniable), and the cover photo sports a large Joseph Beuys-like sculpture Peter created during the same period."

Artist:	JOHANSSON, SVEN-AKE
Title:	Schlingerland (1972)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 212CD

"Stockholm, Fall 1972. Sven-�ke Johansson, up to then busy playing and recording with Peter Br�tzmann, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Manfred Schoof and other leading figures of continental improvisation, as well as his own lesser-known Moderne Nordeurop�ische Dorfmusik, sat down to make one of the world's unique drum documents. Johansson put Schlingerland out himself in a heretofore unseen-by-most-humans edition of several hundred, with a lovely hand-printed cover. Later, Berlin's incendiary stalwart FMP initiated its sister label SAJ by reissuing the LP. It wasn't the first solo free percussion album in Europe -- Pierre Favre and Han Bennink beat Johansson by a couple of years. But it is unlike those other percussion-centric records, focused fixatedly on the drumset. Nothing extraneous; no bells or whistles. A poem on polyrhythm. A meditation on varieties of flow and levels of intensity. And the infinite possibilities of the kit."

Artist:	SCHLIPPENBACH QUARTET
Title:	Hunting the Snake (1975)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 213CD

"Astounding 1975 Radio Bremen session from Germany -- never before released, by one of the greatest working bands in the history of European improvised music is offered for your consideration on Hunting The Snake. How can you lose? This all-star ensemble features Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano, Evan Parker on saxophones, Peter Kowald on bass, and Paul Lovens on drums and singing saw. Though they recorded two great LPs for Germany's historic out-label FMP, the Schlippenbach Quartet has no music available on CD...until now, via John Corbett's Unheard Music Series. A brilliant, previously unreleased 77 minute program from an under-documented powerhouse, in a luscious package featuring a gallery of period portraits by the great Italian photographer Roberto Masotti and a stunning cover painting by the legendary Michael Snow combine to make Hunting The Snake an unbeatable package for anyone interested in a peak period from one of the great European music ensembles of all time."

Artist:	MCPHEE, JOE
Title:	Trinity
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 214CD

2011 repress, originally reissued pre-9/11. "Trinity represents the second installation in The Unheard Music Series efforts to resurrect Joe McPhee's early '70's work on the CjR label, soon to be completed with Underground Railroad and Pieces Of Light. This brilliant trio recording of blues inflected out-soul from '73 follows up on hugely successful Nation Time, recorded a year later. Originally issued in '73 in an edition of 1000, Trinity has not available since. John Corbett has remastered Trinity from original tapes; the LP had to be severely compressed to squeeze all the music on to it, but in the digital realm restoration of all the sweet space was possible. Hence, Trinity has never sounded so fantastic! Featured are a long drum and tenor duet section (with McPhee breaking new ground on the horn), and a fantastic piece dedicated to Albert Ayler, with McPhee overdubbed on soprano sax and pocket cornet. Utterly spellbinding."

Artist:	THOMAS, LUTHER
Title:	Funky Donkey Vols. 1 & 2
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 215CD

"Funky Donkey is an ultra-rare document from the Black Artists Group (BAG) archives, led by alto saxophonist Luther Thomas, with a full force free-funk ensemble. UMS Producer John Corbett & Mr. Thomas have also unearthed a second volume of unadulterated Donkey Funk (featuring a long piece written by saxophonist Oliver Lake), which was recorded at same performance, prepared for release but never issued. Finally, almost three decades later, it's available for the first time. These great recordings featuring the Bowie brothers: late-great Art Ensemble of Chicago trumpeter Lester Bowie, and Defunkt-founder/trombonist Joseph Bowie, as well as reed player J.D. Parran (fresh from recording with The Band!) and versatile drummer Charles 'Bobo' Shaw. Out of print for twenty years, Funky Donkey delivers massive mid-70s creative sounds; Great Black Music, St. Louis style."

Artist:	ROVA SAXOPHONE QUARTET
Title:	As Was
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 216CD

"Simply put, As Was is a masterpiece of American creative music. These huge quartet recordings from the band's first incarnation with Andrew Voigt were first issued on Larry Ochs and Henry Kaiser's legendary Metalanguage label in '81, and have never been previously available on CD. Bay Area ROVA continue to make great music; they are the finest, most adventurous saxophone quartet in the biz. This record features some of their most memorable compositions, including the superb, R&B inflected 'Paint Another Take Of The Shootpop,' dedicated to Olivier Messiaen and Otis Redding, and 'Daredevils,' which Larry Ochs describes as '...a little hit of the circus.' As Was has been remastered & resequenced from original tapes by Rova's Larry Ochs, UMS has restored the swank original cover to the form it was initially envisioned (when printed for the LP is didn't turn out the way the group wanted it to...). This one record shows how expansive and exciting the sometimes mundane saxophone quartet format can be, when deployed with the right combination of care and spunk."

Artist:	MOSLANG-GUHL (VOICE CRACK)
Title:	Knack On
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 217CD

From Jim O'Rourke's liner notes...: 'Moslang-Guhl'. You'd be forgiven if you thought it was food. It's not, but they use food. Previous to Voice Crack, Norbert Moslang and Andy Guhl were longhair troublemakers on the European improvising scene, more power to them. Their first record Deep Voices (FMP 510) pictured the boys rocking out on a variety of very small percussion and very large reeds. There are 'home-made instruments', not so odd for the time, there was Hugh Davies, Michael Wiszwicz even Evan Parker was rockin an oscillator. But somewhere in St. Gallen, Switzerland, these guys were doing their homework. Knack On was released in 82, and in the interim, they must have come upon something that sent them on towards their path to Voice Crack. On this record you'll here them crossing the line, moving past the improv w/electronics sound of the Tony Oxley/Allan Davies, Paul Lovens/Paul Lytton, AMM, MEV etc. axis, jumping headfirst into everyday SOUND."

Artist:	ANDERSON, FRED
Title:	Dark Day/Live In Verona (1979)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 218CD

"Fred Anderson made his first visit to Europe, accompanied by his long-term partner, trumpeter Billy Irimfield, in February, 1977. The two Chicagoans appeared as featured guests with Neighbours, an Austrian trio led by pianist Dieter Glawischnig, and with that group they recorded the album Accents (Musicians Record Company). Anderson toured Europe for the first time with an ensemble of his own a year later including an appearance at the Seventh International New Jazz Festival Moer. The day before they left on that second European sojourn, the Fred Anderson Quartet performed at home in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, as part of an ongoing series of AACM concerts presented by the museum. The MCA gig was taped and later issued on the tiny Austrian label Message Records. Released in a small batch it rather quickly became the rarest item in Fred Anderson's vinyl discography and has until now been a treasured collector's item heard by only a handful of Anderson fans. In reissuing this LP, we at UMS decided to augment it with an especially hot tape from the ensuing tour of Europe."

Artist:	STARSHIP BEER
Title:	Nut Music (1976-88)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 220CD

"John Corbett's Unheard Music Series presents an outlandish excursion in out-rock, improvised noise & experimental sounds -- or as Starship Beer called it, Nut Music -- from a great, little-known upstate New York trio, formed at the dawn of the '70s. THIS Starship was heavily influenced by Captain Beefheart and creative jazz -- but concocted its own uniquely demented, completely charming music. The group included well known artist Pat O'Brian (whose work graces the reissue), and music journalist Kevin Whitehead, author of New Dutch Swing (Billboard Books) and the jazz authority on NPR Radio's 'Fresh Air.' Our UMS release compiles the entirety of their sole long out-of-print LP, Nut Music: As Free As The Squirrels, originally released on the Land Mammal label in a single batch of 1000 in 1979. Also included: almost another entire record's worth of bonus tracks, all previously unreleased, which include the twisted C&W death song '10-4 Big Buddy', plus a later collective improvisation that fans of Japanese noise will definitely need to become intimate with! User Directions: Put 1 pt. Cream & 1 pt. Anthony Braxton in a blender. Add dashes of Kurt Schwitters liberally. Set to puree, and presto: Starship Beer."

Artist:	PREHN, TOM
Title:	Tom Prehn Quartet
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 221CD

"Even for very informed fans of avant-garde jazz, Denmark is an awfully remote spot on the map. Among the most interesting (and the most unduly obscure) of the Danish musicians of the period is pianist Tom Prehn. The music on this record is startlingly original. When it was released, Tom Prehn Quartet garnered critical attention in the major Danish press, but it didn't manage to make much impact too far outside of its homeland. Nevertheless, decades later it is still a remarkable document, effectively merging jazz energy with characteristics that wouldn't fully emerge in European free music until later in its development. This is original free music of the highest calibre, quite far ahead (or maybe outside) of its time. Certain elements come from the realm of composed music. Indeed, in '67, on the verge of formally finishing his studies, Prehn took lessons in composition from Earle Brown and Witold Lutoslawski, and the importance of the modernist tradition makes itself heard, particularly on Prehn's highly unusual rhythmic study 'Modus Vivendi.' The message of �rhus, 1967: four joyous cartographers boldly charting new landscapes, leaving behind a document that should force free music aficionados to rethink familiar maps 34-years later." -- John Corbett.

Artist:	SUN RA
Title:	Nuclear War
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 222CD

2011 repress, originally reissued 2001. "Nuclear War stands as one of the great monuments in the latter part of Sun Ra's enormous oeuvre. It's an LP that by all rights should have been one of his breakthroughs, featuring one of the tightest versions of the Philadelphia-era Arkestra in a program that includes an appealing mix of standards and Ra originals. The title track is arguably to the '80s what 'Space Is The Place' was to the '70s . Ra's anthem for the decade, a piece that perfectly reflected certain apocalyptic aspects of his philosophy and his underlying quest for a better future. Ra thought very highly of this recording. He personally approached Columbia Records, certain that it was a winner, and when they didn?t opt to issue it he reportedly became depressed and bitter. Eventually, Ra sold the music to an outfit called Y Records. Y was a very interesting British independent label whose catalogue included important post-punk LPs by the Pop Group and the Slits, some outstanding reggae and a couple of records of improvised music. In London at the beginning of the '80s, musical worlds were colliding, and people like Steve Beresford and David Toop actively crossed all kinds of genre borders, confusing rock and dub and jazz and noise. Y Records producer Dick O'Dell first put out 'Nuclear War' as a 12-inch single -- the idea of Ra on an extended play disco plate was, in its own way, sheer brilliance! -- b/w the glorious June Tyson vehicle 'Sometimes I'm Happy,' and two years later the full record was issued on Y Records in Italy. But the LP never went into full distribution and as a result the few copies that trickled into circulation became some of the rarest entries in Ra's discography."

Artist:	GLOBE UNITY ORCHESTRA
Title:	Globe Unity 67/70
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 223CD

Alexander V. Schlippenbach's historic trans-European free jazz orchestra, featuring Gunter Hampel, Kris Wanders, Gerd Dudek, Willem Breuker, Manfred Schoof, Peter Br�tzmann, Albert Mangelsdorff, Peter Kowald, Jaki Liebezeit, Mani Neumeier, Sven-Ake Johansson, etc. The 2 enclosed pieces are previously unreleased German radio broadcasts. "Since the beginning of the 'free jazz era' in 1960 at that time, we played almost exclusively in small groups -- I was fascinated by the idea of playing our 'new' music with a large ensemble. The premiere performance, in November 1966 in the Berliner Philharmonic, was a sensational success, because the press outdid themselves equally in extravagant praise and hysterical vituperation. With this, the Globe Unity was founded and began its career, which lasted more than twenty years. The compositions presented on this CD originated in radio commissions for the Donaueachinger Tage f�r Neus Musik ('Globe Unity 67') and for the Berliner Jazztage ('Globe Unity 70'). The 67 piece is based on the systematic application and expansion of the procedures already used in Globe Unity 66. In this respect, 'Globe Unity 70' is determined more by aleatorics and by semantic information for the players." --Alexander V. Schlippenbach

Artist:	THORNTON, CLIFFORD
Title:	Freedom & Unity
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 225CD

2008 repress. Beautifully melodic soul jazz sessions from '67, featuring Coltrane Quartet's Jimmy Garrison on bass. Joe McPhee's first appearance on LP, prior to his own quartet's release in 1969. Includes 2 previously unheard/unissued bonus tracks from Joe McPhee's personal archive. Original liner notes by Ornette Coleman & Archie Shepp! "Clifford Thornton should be one of the best-known figures of the free jazz era. That he has lapsed into relative obscurity stands as a testament to the way that the availability of recordings shapes our sense of history. A brass player in a world of saxophonists, he recorded a handful of fantastic records under his own name for BYG, America and JCOA. He was an outspokenly political person in a politically charged atmosphere (in 1970, he was barred entry into France on suspicion of being a Black Panther), and he was an independent record company owner. Third World Records, on which he issued Freedom & Unity and later Communications (1972), was his own label."

Artist:	THOMAS, LUTHER
Title:	Banana: The Lost Session
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 227CD

"Two master tapes from an unreleased session were discovered during the remastering of Funky Donkey, the 1973 Human Arts Ensemble record reissued by Unheard Music Series. These recordings had been mislabeled and looked almost identical to the Funky Donkey tapes, but in fact they turned out to be a lost session from roughly the same time. The group?s personnel was subsequently identified by Luther Thomas: Thomas- alto saxophone, piano, slide whistle, finger chimes; James Marshall- alto, tenor & soprano saxophones, flutes, small instruments; Abdullah Yakub- alto horn, small instruments; Carol Marshall- voice, accordion, small instruments; Charles Bobo Shaw- drums. Clearly intended for release as an LP, perhaps , the tapes included verbally slated track titles. The entire session is presented here, including an outtake of one track."

Artist:	VAN HOVE, FRED
Title:	Complete Vogel Recordings (1972-74)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 229CD

"In the early '70s, Belgian improvisor Fred Van Hove released three LPs on the Vogel label. These recordings, issued in very small quantities, have become some of the most sought-after and difficult to find items in the canon of European improvised music. Even some of the hardest-digging vinyl freaks haven't heard of these treasures- let alone own them. Compiling the two solo Vogel records (Fred Van Hove and Live At The University) and one record of duets with tenor saxophonist Cel Overberghe (Een Tweede Vogel), as well as an even rarer 7-inch 45 by Van Hove and Overberghe, Complete Vogel Recordings offers a rare document of one of the greatest pianists in free music from a particularly fertile period in his career. In addition to the tenor/piano duets, the record with Overberghe includes some musique concrete and overdubbed parts, with the saxophonist on bass and drums and Van Hove on organ; Live At The University features Van Hove on conventional piano, but also performing his special prepared piano improvisation with ping-pong balls on the strings."

Artist:	PETER BROTZMANN GROUP
Title:	For Adolphe Sax
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 230CD

"At last, the reissue of German saxophonist Peter Br�tzmann's long out-of-print first record, one of the most auspicious debuts of free music, and a trenchant tribute to the inventor of the saxophone. For Adolphe Sax is a roundhouse punch of European free jazz, delivered in1967 by the saxophonist's first classic trio featuring drummer Sven-Ake Johansson and bassist Peter Kowald. Initially issued in a tiny private run on Br�tzmann's own BRO label -- silkscreened cover designed by Br�tzmann, with hand-stamped inner record labels -- it was later reissued on FMP as one of the earliest in the Berlin-based label's extensive, essential catalogue. The Unheard Music Series has lovingly remastered For Adolphe Sax from the original tapes, and the package includes a plump gallery of period photos from Br�tzmann's personal collection. In addition to the original music, the CD is augmented by a never-released nine-minute track, recorded in the studios of Radio Bremen, which adds Belgian pianist Fred van Hove to the trio; in a way, this group give a hint of the transition from Br�tzmann's initial threesome with Johansson and Kowald to the next working trio with Van Hove and drummer Han Bennink."

Artist:	VON SCHLIPPENBACH, ALEXANDER
Title:	The Living Music
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 231CD

"In the third week of April, 1969, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach took a seven-piece ensemble comprised of German, Dutch and British musicians into Conny Plank's Rhenus Studio in Godorf, near K�ln. When the day was over, two separate LPs had been completed. Saxophonist Peter Br�tzmann used the session to record enough material by a quartet (Br�tzmann, bassist Buschi Niebergall, drummer Han Bennink and pianist Fred Van Hove, the latter of whom did not appear with the Schlippenbach band) for side-two of Nipples. Earlier in the afternoon, Schlippenbach and his full band of accomplices recorded the entirety of The Living Music. Schlippenbach initially issued the album on his own Quasar label. In spirit as well as name, 'living music' was an integral part of the early years of FMP. Schlippenbach's The Living Music remains one of the most glorious, if also one of the least well known, of the label's adopted children."

Artist:	SCHOOF, MANFRED
Title:	European Echoes
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 232CD

"During the mid-60s, trumpet and cornet player Manfred Schoof led one of the most important ensembles in German jazz, a quintet with pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach- composer of many of the group's pieces -saxophonist Gerd Dudek, bassist Buschi Niebergall, and drummer Jacky Liebezeit (later augmented by second drummer Sven-Ake Johansson). In '66, Schlippenbach conceived of the Globe Unity Orchestra as a meeting point for this quintet and the Peter Br�tzmann Trio. Three years later, after the quintet had split up, Schoof himself convened a large ensemble for a radio project in Bremen. This orchestra drew its lineup from the increasingly interconnected web of the European free scene: members of the quintet (Dudek, Niebergall, Schlippenbach); Br�tzmann and his new trio with drummer Han Bennink and pianist Fred Van Hove; the constituent members of drummer Pierre Favre's ensembles (including bassist Peter Kowald and pianist Irene Schweizer); their sometime associate Evan Parker and his countrymen Paul Rutherford and Derek Bailey; and fellow trumpeters Enrico Rava and Hugh Steinmetz from Italy and Denmark respectively. The resulting piece revels in doubled and tripled instruments- how unusual, especially, to have three pianists in a group like this, not to mention three trumpets, three tenors and three bassists. Echoes across Europe (Germany, Holland, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Scandanavia), the resounding impact of new jazz and improvised music as it travels from country to country, region to region, scene to scene. A tape of the performance soon became the material for the debut of a new label based in Berlin: Free Music Production."

Artist:	BROTZMANN/BENNINK/VAN HOVE
Title:	Balls
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 233CD

"Reissue of the legendary FMP label's second-ever release: Balls, waxed by Peter Br�tzmann, Han Bennink & Fred Van Hove -- the essential recording by one of the most influential free music trios of all time. The classic studio session originally tracked in 1970 for FMP has been augmented with two substantive, previously unheard & unissued tracks from the period. Balls is the first album to be reissued by this famed trio, documenting some of their most spectacularly physical efforts during the their history together. In short,Balls has it all: Peter Br�tzmann's blistering tenor squall, Han Bennink's limitless �ber-kit world of sound, and Fred Van Hove's ceaselessly inventive keys created unquestionably one of the definitive jazz recordings of the 1970's."

Artist:	HAZEVOET, KEES
Title:	Pleasure
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 234CD

"The second release for Kees 'Haazz' Hazevoet on John Corbett's Unheard Music Series; piano/sax/drum trio recordings featuring Louis Moholo. Moholo, Wanders and Hazevoet coalesced into a terrific free jazz quartet. Their repertoire included terse themes by Hazevoet, and the playing is propelled by Moholo's mighty drumming -- a South African amplification of some of the wave-like energy-field ideas Sonny Murray had pioneered -- coupled with Hazevoet's walloping piano. Pleasure was issued in an unusually small batch -- 250 copies, each with a hand silk-screened cover -- but a few made their way into journalists' hands and garnered some glowing reviews, which made the prospect of continued work favorable."

Artist:	SCHIANO, MARIO
Title:	On The Waiting-List
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 235CD

"The legendary 'godfather of free music' offers his finest album on John Corbett's Unheard Music Series; ultra-rare Italian answer to the Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded in Rome 1973. Mario Schiano is one of the founding figures of free music in Italy, an intense and often uproariously funny alto saxophonist, bandleader and high-conceptualist who has been spreading his own postmodern eclecticism since the early '60s. Later in that decade, Schiano co-founded Gruppo Romano Free Jazz, and he's been the Godfather of free music in Italy ever since. Recorded in Rome in 1973, On The Waiting-List is one of the rarest items in Schiano's extensive -- and by-and-large impossible to find -- discography. Originally released on the King Universal label, from Naples, and produced by Toni Cosenza, it is virtually unknown outside of its homeland (mighty obscure there, too...). An outstanding creative jazz outing, the record features Schiano on alto as well as organ and voice (on the extra-outre track 'All It Takes'), with other luminaries of the Italian jazz scene."

Artist:	BR�TZMANN GROUP, PETER
Title:	More Nipples (1969)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 236CD

"One of the great archaeological finds of recent years: Three lost tracks from the Nipples sessions. Dateline: Germany, 1969. The legendary lineup: Peter Br�tzmann and Evan Parker (saxophones), Derek Bailey (guitar), Fred Van Hove (piano), Buschi Niebergall (bass), Han Bennink (drums). Over the course of two long studio sessions, Peter Br�tzmann assembled one of the masterpieces of free jazz from Europe, Nipples, which was reissued by the Unheard Music Series in 2000. Br�tzmann has always mentioned more material, but thought it had been discarded long ago. But in 2002, FMP founder Jost Gebers discovered a reel of material, recorded by both the quartet (without Bailey and Parker) and sextet incarnations, in the FMP archive. Here, then, for the first time, is an entire record's worth of alternate pieces, including a sextet blowout featuring Parker on soprano saxophone and Bailey's guitar much more up-front than on the original LP, and two fantastic quartet pieces."

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	Music From Tomorrow's World
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 237CD

Completely unissued, much-speculated material from their 1960 Chicago-based era. "If the Wonder Inn recordings have been much speculated over during the four decades since they were made, a studio date from someplace called Majestic Hall rings only very distant bells, even for those who played on it. Majestic Hall was a fantastic session, with a slightly larger octet incarnation of the Arkestra, including Cohran on cornet, Gilmore again in gorgeous form, Marshall Allen and two other saxophonists: Gene Easton on alto and Ronald Wilson on baritone. Drummer Robert Barry is explosive on the latter track, and as with the Wonder Inn tracks, bassist Ronnie Boykins was the Arkestra's unfailing rudder. Behind it all looms the creative fireball named Sun Ra, concocting ceaselessly creative intros, comping imaginatively, or going without horns on the fragment of 'Interstellar Lo-Ways' that closes the disc. Here are two late-breaking installations from a single season in the story of Sun Ra's Chicago period, each focused on a different aspect of his concept. The Wonder Inn: Arkestra in motion, as part of the community, engaging the underground jazz intelligentsia on the south side. Majestic Hall: the grand scale of Ra's compositional and arranging genius, the heroic efforts of his band. Yet a couple more key pieces in the big puzzle that is Sun Ra's master-oeuvre."

Artist:	GRUNTZ, GEORGE
Title:	Mental Cruelty (The 1960 Jazz soundtrack)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 238CD

"In 1960, an astonishing jazz ensemble was convened by Swiss pianist George Gruntz to create a soundtrack for the Hannes Schmidhauser film Mental Cruelty. The group included bebop innovator Kenny 'Klook' Clarke on drums and Belgian saxophonist Barney Wilen, two of the most swinging and sensitive musicians on the planet. Though the dark, lyrical, mysterious soundtrack was initially released on a 10-inch EP, legal difficulties led to its being recalled, and the few copies that were sold became incredibly valuable collectors items. Now, for the first time, the session is issued in its full glory, including several previously unreleased tracks. One of the rarest European jazz records (only 100 copies on planet earth)."

Artist:	ALTERATIONS
Title:	Voila Enough! (1979-81)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 239CD

"Alterations was one of the premier British improvising groups of the 1970s. Comprised of four omnivorous multi-instrumentalists -- Steve Beresford, David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack -- they represented an important crossing zone between abstraction and pop, incorporating elements of punk, indigenous musics and hip-hop (Toop wrote the influential study Rap Attack, as well as his more recent book Ocean Of Sound into their romping free play. Compiled and exhaustively annotated by Toop, Voila Enough! consists of previously unreleased music from '79-'81, packaged with a gallery of unpublished photos by Gerard Rouy."

Artist:	VON SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO, ALEXANDER
Title:	Pakistani Pomade (1972)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 240CD

"Finally reissued after decades of being unobtainable, one of the milestones of improvised music. Recorded in 1972, Pakistani Pomade is the debut outing by the longest standing free music ensemble in Europe, the Schlippenbach Trio -- together pianist Schlippenbach, saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens continue to rock the world of improvisation today. Asked about his favorite recordings among those he's made, Parker has long referred to this gem, and now everyone can hear exactly why. A powerhouse, full of the group's trademark detail but also packing considerable free jazz punch, the record contains a variety of tracks, from short experimental sound pieces to epic firestorms, all featuring the early mature work of master percussionist Lovens. As part of the Unheard Music Series' FMP Archive Edition, Pakistani Pomade was remastered from the original tapes by FMP founder Jost Gebers. The UMS reissue also augments the original session with more than 20 minutes of new material that was thought lost, but recently unearthed."

Artist:	DODDS, BABY
Title:	Talking and Drum Solos
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 241CD

"One of the most important pieces of vinyl ever waxed, Talking and Drum Solos is the first recorded album of drum solos -- by one of the great pioneers of jazz percussion: Warren 'Baby' Dodds. A mainstay of the early Chicago jazz scene alongside his brother, clarinetist Johnny Dodds -- and inspiration to countless jazz trapmen (including Han Bennink -- who has cited Talking as his favorite record), this endlessly inventive original was born in the Big Easy in 1898. Dodds made his mark in the mid-30s, peaking as the featured artist at a 1946 Carnegie Hall Pops Concert. The cornerstone of our remastered UMS reissue is Dodds' rare 1946 Folkways Records 10", featuring him playing and (true to the title) talking about drumming styles of of the early jazz era, as recorded by the legendary Mose Asch. Also assembled here for your infotainment & contextual purposes are twenty bonus tracks from Folkways Records' Country Brass Bands Of The South, Volume One."

Artist:	SUN RA
Title:	Spaceship Lullaby
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 243CD

"Ever-ready to delve into some serious sonic archaeology, The Unheard Music Series is proud to bring to light a compelling and particularly obscure facet of Sun Ra's Chicago activities from the mid-1950's: a collection entitled Spaceship Lullaby, featuring Ra's work with several vocal ensembles from the period. Although similar musings had heretofore been heard only on the rare 7"s compiled on The Singles (Evidence), Spaceship Lullaby presents a full CD's worth of unreleased material, including songs by Nu Sounds & The Cosmic Rays, plus a previously unknown doo-wop group known as The Lintels -- each singing popular tunes of the day. Strange, wonderful -- and even hilarious in places -- this is pop music as only Ra could envision it, featuring him on piano along with the great Robert Barry on drums; on a few select tracks, the Arkestra is even backing The Cosmic Rays. Included here for your enjoyment and edification are two songs (the glorious title track & 'Chicago U.S.A.'), which were known to exist but thought to be lost forever -- as well as 35 (!) other tracks."

Artist:	BROTZMANN/BENNINK/VAN HOVE
Title:	FMP 130
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 244CD

"Long hailed as one of the great powerhouse groups of European free jazz -- hear, for example, their gut-wrenching 1970 debut Balls -- the trio of German saxophonist Peter Br�tzmann, Belgian pianist Fred Van Hove and Dutch percussionist Han Bennink waxed this (arguably their greatest) LP in a Bremen studio in 1973. Unlike other, more sprawling documents of the threesome, the self-titled record, now lovingly referred to by fans as its catalogue number, FMP 130 shows the breadth of moods and materials open to the group in a set of concise, powerful statements. Listen to Van Hove's masterful celeste, Br�tzmann's bottomless bass saxophone and Bennink's unlimited well of junk percussion. Short tracks, a wide range of instruments, crisp German studio recording, and the classic cover with Br�tzmann's distressed b&w photos, FMP 130 is a proud addition to the growing FMP Archive Edition."

Artist:	BROTZMANN CLARINET PROJECT, PETER
Title:	Berlin Djungle
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 246CD

"At JazzFest Berlin in 1984, Peter Br�tzmann convened a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble, aiming to put a spotlight on the clarinet. The six (!) hand-picked clarinetists -- not all of them always thought of as clarinetists -- constitute one of the great 'strange bedfellows' groupings of all time. Simply to hear Br�tzmann and John Zorn on the same stage requires quite an imagination (and this is the only such recording), but add to that the stupendous British jazzman Tony Coe (well known as the tenor saxophonist on Mancini's 'Pink Panther'), East German Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, French sophisticate Louis Sclavis and Lower Eastsider J.D. Parran, and you've got quite a volatile cocktail. Sit them atop Cecil Taylor's rhythm section, Tony Oxley on drums and William Parker on bass, and add Toshinori Kondo (of Die Like a Dog fame) on trumpet, Johannes Bauer and Alan Tomlinson on trombones, and the lineup is unstoppable. The Br�tzmann Clarinet Project performs a single, lengthy score by Br�tzmann, and the results are as sensitive and poetic as they are incendiary, as befits the black wooden horn. Remastered from the original tapes, with Br�tzmann's original cover design, Berlin Djungle is proudly presented as part of the FMP Archive Edition."

Artist:	DUDEK/NIEBERGALL/VESALA
Title:	Open
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 247CD

"Berlin, 1977: three masters of European free music convened for a triumvirate summit. Finnish drummer Edward Vesala, known in later years for his fiery big-band outings on ECM, was one of the pioneers of free jazz in Scandanavia, a tremendously sensitive percussionist and highly inventive kitsman who passed away 1999. Buschi Niebergall also died much too young (in the '80s), but he was a key bassist in the emergent German free jazz scene, playing with Peter Br�tzmann, Manfred Schoof, Alex Schlippenbach, and many others. His German colleague, Gerd Dudek (here playing not only tenor sax, but also flutes and soprano saxophone), is a quiet hero of German jazz, a transitional figure on the cusp of free music with the Manfred Schoof Quintet in the mid-60s. He's sometimes compared to Clifford Jordan, a reference that makes sense, but he's also as wide open as the title of this great record suggests. This entry in the FMP Archive Edition, never before on CD, was remastered from the original tapes, with the original cover art. A little-known gem gets the polishing it deserves."

Artist:	VON SCHLIPPENBACH'S GLOBE UNITY ORCHESTRA, ALEXANDER
Title:	Hamburg '74
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 248CD

"The collective energies of the Globe Unity Orchestra were at a high-point in the mid 1970s, at which time the group was known both for its earth-shaking power and the deep thinking of its instigator, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, who had studied contemporary orchestration and knew well how to arrange for an improvisors' big band. In 1974, as a radio project for NDR JazzWorkshop, Schlippenbach composed a piece for his orchestra and the NDR Choir. Hamburg '74 was, as he has explained subsequently, Schlippenbach's 'contribution to humor in the music'. It is an unusual and beguiling piece, an side-long encounter between classical voice, improvised music whisper and free jazz yowl. With a Globe Unity that included a sax section of Peter Br�tzmann, Evan Parker, R�diger Carl, Gerd Dudek, and Michel Pilz, Peter Kowald on bass, brass including Kenny Wheeler, G�nter Christmann, Manfred Schoof and Paul Rutherford, Schlippenbach on piano, Peter Kowald on bass and tuba, special guest Derek Bailey on guitar, and BOTH Han Bennink and Paul Lovens on drums, this was a lean, mean orchestral machine. Remastered from the original tapes, Hamburg '74 is a lesser-known classic of European free music, available for the first time on CD."

Artist:	CONTEMPORARY JAZZ QUINTET, THE
Title:	Actions 1966-67
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 250CD

"Thirty-three years after it was recorded, this document remains startling. It is, on one hand, a treasure unearthed from the archives, an exceptional unknown tape from the halcyon days of free jazz. But more than that, it is what was at the time occasionally referred to as "living music" -- that is, it's music in/about/of LIFE. Three decades after it was waxed, it is still very much alive. For many, perhaps most, free music fans outside Denmark, this disc will be a revelation. But The Contemporary Jazz Quintet was an active part of the European free jazz movement, and trumpeter Hugh Steinmetz and alto saxophonist Franz Beckerlee were also visible in other parts of that international scene. The core of the ensemble, including bassist Steffen Andersen was formed as a quartet in '59, reportedly playing hard-bop in the Miles Davis/John Coltrane vein. There is simply nothing else like this sound in the whole gamut of free music. There have, of course, been other percussionists who have doubled on saw -- Han Bennink, Paul Lovens, Jerome Cooper, for instance. But in this case the singing saw is woven into the fabric of the ensemble; it is a deep part of the very soul of The Contemporary Jazz Quintet- a wailing, sorrowful/joyous sound that echoes the saxophone and trumpet and leads them to squalls of energy and interaction otherwise unforeseen -- this is unprecedented music, totally fresh and pulsing, at times frightening in its intensity. Music of its time. Music of our time. Startling music. Any time."

Artist:	LAST EXIT
Title:	Koln
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 252CD

Finally after more than a decade, this seminal lexicon of lightning is again available for public consumption. A veritable Murderer's Row of sonic titans -- each at full strength: Br�tzmann on tenor; Sharrock on guitar; Laswell on 6-string bass; Jackson on drums. This lineup speaks for itself. "You know, I really feel the Exit quartet is getting stronger all the time... we've been through our 'power playing' period. I don't want to be typecast as just a 'blaster.' Now the shit is really wide open -- it can go anywhere. The interaction is getting to be very sensitive -- though I'm sure there'll always be some good old passion and violence. But there's a lot of potential still to be explored, and I hope we get the chance to explore it." -- Peter Br�tzmann, 1990.

Artist:	BROTZMANN/HAN BENNINK, PETER
Title:	Schwarzwaldfahrt
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	ALP 254CD

(excerpted from Peter's liner notes): "There was a time Han Bennink and I, sometimes with Fred Van Hove, would drive through the Black Forest to get to places like the jazz club in Villingen and Loerrach, to play. At the same time during the end of sixties, beginning of seventies Joachim-Ernst Berendt, chief of the SWF Radio was setting up a yearly meeting and driving through the forest Bennink and I had the idea of just going and playing in nature. We talked to Berendt about the idea and he provided us with recording equipment and an official letter allowing us to go and make noises, even in parts of the forest that were closed to the public. We took off for about a week at the end of the winter, still some snow on the peaks; it was grim, rainy, cloudy weather, and very cold. We drove in Bennink's windowless Citroen lorry he had painted black. You could see the original blue-gray shinning though. Wherever we thought it was nice, we stopped, set up and played a bit. Bennink hadn't taken any drums with him, so he was playing on trees, stones, whatever was at hand. I had clarinets and saxophones, but it was much too cold to get them really working. Han had clarinets, sopranino, and some string instruments and toys..."

Artist:	SCHERF TRIO, DIETER
Title:	Inside-Outside Reflections
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 255CD

"Another long-lost gem (in a possibly infinite series...) on Atavistic's UMS! Inside-Outside Reflections, waxed in 1974 by a trio fronted by a little-known multiple reed player from Germany named Dieter Scherf, is one of the greatest obscure gems in European free music -- and for collectors, something of a minor holy grail. Featuring a top performance by a very young Paul Lovens, one of the world's most ingenious percussionists, Inside-Outside is the result of loads of live touring by the trio -- which also featured Polish bassist, Jacek Bednarek on this first-time-on-CD package. Features classic 'broken down van' tour photos, and the original vibrant cover from microscopic private pressing on the LST label -- previously owned only by the freakiest collectors! The revelation, aside from super-rare Lovens (playing at the same time in another ultrahot trio, namely that of Alexander Schlippenbach, with saxophonist Evan Parker ), is Scherf -- whose horn playing represents a wonderful intersection/collision of styles and sounds."

Artist:	MCPHEE/JOHN SNYDER, JOE
Title:	Pieces of Light
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 256CD

"Simply put, if Joe McPhee was born in Japan, he'd be regarded as one the country's 'National Living Treasures'. As an American soul-jazz maverick and standard-bearer of the form since the mid-1960s, he's a brilliant improvising musician who plays many instruments, including saxophones, trumpets, valve trombone, clarinet, piano, and sometimes electronics. McPhee is held in the highest esteem as a musician internationally -- and especially throughout Europe. The Unheard Music Series' Pieces Of Light (1974) reissue completes the CJRecords trilogy of Joe's earliest works -- which includes the legendary Nationtime and Trinity."

Artist:	BR�TZMANN GROUP, PETER
Title:	Alarm
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 257CD

"Intense FMP Archive reissue on Atavistic's Unheard Music Series, featuring an incredible, international line-up led by Br�tz: ESP Records reed-god Frank Wright & ICP mainstay Willem Breuker (saxes), the inimitable Alex Von Schlippenbach (piano), South African legend Louis Moholo (drums), Harry Miller (bass), Toshinori Kondo (trumpet), and Hannes Bauer & Alan Tomlinson (trombones). Reissue of incendiary, government-interrupted national radio session from 1981."

Artist:	BROTZMANN/MANGELSDORFF/SOMMER
Title:	Pica Pica
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 258CD

Recorded 9/18/82, a reissue of FMP 1050. "A sweet period piece from the FMP Archive, on Atavistic's Unheard Music Series -- featuring Brotz, Albert Mangelsdorff & Gunter 'Baby' Sommer." Excerpted from Brotzmann's liner notes: "I remember at one period when Han Bennink couldn't make the gigs -- he was playing with Misha most of the time -- Albert and I had a trio with Fred Van Hove, and we used to play in a little bar in Cologne which was run by the son of Paffgen brewery, a famous little brewery where Kolsch is brewed. It was equipped with an upright piano and a 20-liter barrel of fresh beer, which was empty after the gig. Albert's generosity and open-mindedness, compared to many other jazz musicians in the period, was remarkable. When he started working with crazy Brotzmann and Bennink, some of his colleagues gave him a very hard time. But I think he profited from our work the same way we did from his experience and musicality." -- Peter Brotzmann, Chicago, October 2005.

Artist:	LACY QUARTET, STEVE
Title:	Esteem
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 260CD

Live In Paris, 1975. "When Steve Lacy passed away in June, 2004, he left behind an archive of more than 300 private recordings -- mostly cassette tapes of concerts dating from the 1970s up until his final months. Many feature his longtime quintet and subsequent sextet, as well as trio, duo and solo performances; some revisit old friendships, some present unique collaborations, while others document special projects that never quite found their way to the recording studio. In all of these, the same adventurous spirit prevails, the same calm integrity. Esteem features Lacy's working quintet one lively night at La Cour des Miracles, a Paris club the group frequented at the time. The musicians were in residence there for most of February, 1975, and again through much of December. Speaking about the creative advantage of these long engagements, in an interview for Jazz Magazine, Lacy said: 'It multiplies the favorable occasions. When you play one night and you know that you'll be playing the next night too, that changes what you do. You can take more risks.'"

Artist:	GALLIO/VOERKEL/FREY
Title:	Tiegel
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 261CD

"Based in Switzerland, saxophonist Christoph Gallio has been very active in Europe since the 1980s, but remains relatively unknown to American ears -- even though his trio, Day & Taxi , toured the U.S. a couple of times. He performs and writes a wide range of music, from the sleek and elegant modern jazz of the aforementioned group to free improv (with Ensemble Uncontrolled) and Steve Lacy-inspired song cycles. He has recorded for Leo, Slam, Unit, and his own label, Percaso. At age 20, Gallio enrolled in the H�here Schule f�r Gestaltung, an art school in Basel; his professional career started at the same time, including experiences with Oskar Giger's Pig Band; the Gulli Group (w/ G�nter M�ller); the WIM Orchestra (w/ Ir�ne Schweizer and Norbert M�slang); and Tiegel, a trio with pianist Urs Voerkel and bassist Peter K. Frey. The latter project lasted until 1983; he also began to collaborate with dancers around the same time, something he would continue to do throughout his career. In 1989, Gallio went to Paris to study with leading avant-garde saxophonist Steve Lacy. The trio he formed afterwards, Day & Taxi would be very much influenced by his elegance. The early '90s saw him perform with Fred Frith and Phil Minton, and in a duet with Japanese drummer Takashi Kazamaki."

Artist:	BROTZMANN OCTET, THE PETER
Title:	The Complete Machine Gun Sessions
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 262CD

"Arguably the single-most important landmark in European free music: the original BRO Records LP restored to its '68 format, with two alternate takes, new liner notes by Br�tzmann and John Corbett -- PLUS the only live version of 'Machine Gun' ever recorded." "In 1968, there was a palpable sense of optimism in the air. This in spite of the fact that the shitheads seemed to have the upper hand, with the quagmire of Vietnam, the intractability of the American struggle for Civil Rights, Martin Luther King's assassination, the 'shoot to kill' order in Chicago. But in Paris during the spring of '68, the students took the reins, and across northern Europe, a euphoric attitude had spread, charged by a sense that the world was not stuck forever but in fact could be changed. That was the impetus behind Peter Br�tzmann's composition and subsequent LP, Machine Gun. As Br�tzmann has said: 'It was the feeling, the very naive feeling that we could take a little part in changing the world.' Adopting its title from Don Cherry's nickname for Br�tzmann, 'Machine Gun' drew on the huge horn section of Lionel Hampton's 'Flying Home' for inspiration, translating the hilarious saxophonic power of the jump blues and Illinois Jacquet's booting and hollering into an abstraction painted with a flame-thrower, a la Alberto Burri. 'Machine Gun' was a watershed -- and even if it has taken four decades to find its appreciative audience, it is now an essential recording, both in terms of the development of free music in Europe and taken on its own merits, outside of the context of its creation. For this reissue, we have resequenced the CD as the original LP, followed by the two extant alternate takes. For comparison, UMS has included the live version, recorded two months earlier at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival, adding Gerd Dudek to the ensemble." --John Corbett, Chicago, May, 2007

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ASTRO INFINITY ARKESTRA
Title:	Strange Strings
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 263CD

"A deluxe reissue in a new O-card pack from the Unheard Music Series -- released in conjunction with El Saturn Records. '...all this considered, Strange Strings, the culmination of all Sun Ra's string studies, is without doubt one of Sun Ra's master works. Strange Strings, standing squarely alongside Sun Ra's other epics of the mid-1960s, Atlantis and Magic City, absolutely shines as his most painterly of expositions in its surface richness and play with deep space and coloration. He has offered no world more strange than this in his entire output as a composer and orchestrator. These explorations are only hinted at in scattered moments on other recordings from this period. The full exercise of his very original and very imaginative powers as musical adventurer and visionary bursts forth in the masterful cosmic clattering of Strange Strings." --Hal Rammel, 2006

Artist:	SUN RA AND HIS INTERGALACTIC INFINITY ARKESTRA
Title:	The Night of the Purple Moon
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 264CD

"The second deluxe Ra reissue in the new o-card format from the UMS, released in conjunction with El Saturn Records is here: Sun Ra rocks out on his ultra-rare 'Roksichord' record, a small group outing from 1970 with an alternate take PLUS three mind-bending, never issued Wurlitzer solos from '64. Long-awaited & available on CD for the first time!" "The Night of the Purple Moon is Sun Ra's great 'Roksichord record.' It's also one of his most delightful, upbeat, and accessible outings -- full of bluesy twists and turns, relatively short tracks, and the unforgettable nasal quack of his keyboard. Waxed in New York in 1970 --just after the Roksichord had been introduced -- Purple Moon is one of the classic (and relatively rare) small group Arkestra recordings. Purple Moon was issued on Saturn in 1972; augmenting the original LP is a familiar alternate take of the Arkestra chestnut, "Love In Outer Space." To show something of the origins of Ra's keyboard playing in this period, we have added three incredible home recordings made in 1964, on which Ra pummels a lightly-amplified Wurlitzer electric piano, and on the first of them, he adds the startling sound of Celeste." --John Corbett, Chicago, May, 2007

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 265CD

"The third deluxe Ra reissue in the new O-Card format from the UMS, released in conjunction with El Saturn Records is here: a superb reissue of a delicious, seldom heard Saturn Records document from '70 -- replete with two alternate takes of a previously unissued classic AND an 'Untitled' piece from the original '77 sessions... all available for the first time on CD!" "Sun Ra's career-long commitment to his Arkestra allowed the pianist and bandleader little time for the elaboration of less populous projects. There were brief, tantalizing glimpses, however, into his small group concept -- including a rash of recordings made in the mid 1970s. There are, for instance, two great double-LPs of quartet music, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore gloriously forward, made for the Italian Horo label in 1978. A year prior, a stripped-down group made a set of studio recordings focused on standard jazz songbook material, as well as some original music by Ra, that was issued on Saturn as Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue. As a special treat, to augment this extremely rare Saturn LP and show how Ra developed the idea for one of his arrangements, two alternative versions of the poignant 'I'll Get By' are included -- taken from a session slated May 3, 1973 by Gilmore. In the distance, the muffled remnant of a previous track appears, taped over on this home recording, the almost in-sync backwards drums providing a low-key element of surreality." --John Corbett, Chicago, October, 2007

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS SOLAR ARKESTRA
Title:	Secrets Of The Sun
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 266CD

"A superb reissue of a mind-numbingly rare Saturn Records document from '62 -- with a previously-unreleased 17-minute track. All available for the first time on CD! Secrets Of The Sun is one of the last great early '60s Saturn LPs to be reissued and is one of his classic early New York releases. So rare that it is barely known even by hard-nosed Ra collectors, it contains music related in approach, acoustics, and arrangement to the more widely-heard material on Out There A Minute (Blast First). From a fertile period in Ra's oeuvre, the 'Solar' years, this group is more loose-limbed and ragged than the Chicago bands, and considerably more edgy. To augment this reissue of Secrets Of The Sun, we have included a track that was originally designed to be the B-side of another Saturn record (catalog number 547, a great mystery among Ra-o-philes), a production that was slated but never issued. Tracking in at the length of an LP side, 'Flight To Mars' comes from the same period exactly, with an extremely unusual tape-collage introduction, spliced onto a tremendously swinging, aggressive feature for drums and extended solos all around. Needless to say, it's an honor and pleasure to finally issue this music after it had rested so long in the can. Perhaps you'll agree that it's only gotten better with age. A well-kept secret indeed." --John Corbett, Chicago/July, 2008.

Artist:	MANERI/PETER DOLGER, JOE
Title:	Peace Concert (1964)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 267CD

"A long-lost '60s treasure from the East Coast rescued and produced by Ken Vandermark's father, Stu, The Peace Concert, as performed in 1964 by living legend Joe Maneri (alto) and Peter Dolger (drums) has finally been exhumed and properly buffed for public consumption. This never-before released recording has been mastered from the original tapes, and includes an in-depth interview with Boston's elder statesman of improv, conducted by Stu Vandermark. For those caught unawares, Mr. Maneri is the father of violinist Mat Maneri, and is highly regarded as one of the true pioneers of the 'language' of the alto saxophone (in fact, Joe has also created a surreal, intense spoken dialect all his own, that often accompanies his musical performances). Mr. Vandermark is a long-time co-conspirator, contributor and fixture on Boston's jazz and improvised music scene; he possesses a formidable 'lifetime of listening' knowledge base on these matters. Check into this outer-orbiting destination in the Unheard Music Series galaxy (and find out why these two men's sons turned out so well!) Excerpted from Stu Vandermark's liner notes: 'There are two eventually simultaneous but not always parallel paths to the Joe Maneri musical journey. First, of course, there is the jazz path. It is the trail of the crash and burn Phoenix, somehow always arising. The path of the composer of concert music, initiated with the guidance of Josef Schmid, was not filled with stops and starts as the jazz path was. Here, Joe pursued several theoretical directions in sequence more or less continuously to this day. Separate as the paths have been, they are part of the same musical map. Although the performance in the middle of the night at St. Peter's Church is profoundly predictive of developments in Joe's music in the 1970s and later, it is important to keep the historical context of the duo performance in mind. Among the recordings documenting the new music at that time in New York were Coltrane Live at Birdland (Impulse 50) three years before Interstellar Space (Impulse 9277), Ornette Coleman's At Town Hall 1962 (ESP 1006), and Albert Ayler's My Name Is Albert (Debut 140). Some of this new music was produced via community connections among the pioneers, as in the case of Ornette Coleman and Steve Lacy or Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor. But many of the new developments were taking place in relative isolation. Joe in 1963, for example, knew virtually nothing of the work of the other pioneers. And yet, what he and Peter Dolger created on that night in St. Peter's Church is certainly of the fabric of the time.'"

Artist:	FOETUS INC.
Title:	Male
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	DVD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 2736DVD

"Recorded over several shows at legendary venues such as New York's CBGB & Chicago's Cabaret Metro in late 1990s, the Male DVD shows Foetus ripping through songs old and new, plus a few fun surprises along the way. This recording packs all the brutal, unrelenting punch and atmosphere of Foetus' studio work, while the band itself avoids slouching at any and all points. 75 minutes of CD quality live Foetus magic. The Foetus all-star big band includes members of Swans, Prong & Cop Shoot Cop." 75 min., NTSC all-region; 5.1 surround sound.

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	The Cry of Jazz
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	DVD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 2865DVD

"Filmed in Chicago, finished in 1959, the Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race, a forecast of what he called 'the death of jazz.' A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white. Rarely seen in cinemas, this is the first commercial release of the Cry of Jazz, transferred from a pristine print and featuring an otherwise unreleased Arkestral soundtrack." Region Zero; 35 min., 5.1 surround sound.

Artist:	LUNCH, LYDIA
Title:	Willing Victim
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	DVD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 4436DVD

"No other artist of the 20th century has fought, forged, punched, and sculpted her own artistic vision in such a uniquely original way. Defying categorization, Lydia Lunch actively has conquered new territories, and has gained international recognition for the innovative quality of her work. She returns on this DVD with her band -- an all-star five piece that includes members of Wilco, Swans, Godflesh, Foetus and Unsane. Together they produce an ambient mood piece that over five movements devolves into a chaotic free jazz apocalypse Willing Victim is a document of a 2003 concert in Graz, Austria, in which the audience plays the whipping boy to Lunch's scathing catharsis, including reworked renditions of Lunch favorites stretching back to the Teenage Jesus years."

Artist:	LUNCH, LYDIA
Title:	Video Hysterie: 1978-2006
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	DVD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 4550DVD

"Video Hysterie offers a thorough & sublime retrospective of Lydia Lunch's musical collaborations from 1976-2001 and is an incredible representation of her approach to art. Hailed by the Boston Phoenix as 'one of the 10 most influential performers of the '90s,' no other artist of the 20th century has fought, forged, punched, and sculpted their own artistic vision in such a uniquely original way. Defying categorization, Lunch actively has conquered new territories, and has gained international recognition for the innovative quality of her work. Robert Palmer from The New York Times writes 'Miss Lunch was always an effective vocal performer. But rock has grown complacent again -- even the underground rock that has borrowed so much from Miss Lunch's various bands over the years. Perhaps it's time for her to administer it a few more rude shocks.'" Dolby Digital; Region 0, NTSC; 5.1 Surround Sound; Running time, approx. 80 mins. Most notably features 6 tracks of the original Teenage Jesus, live at Max's Kansas City from 1978; six tracks of 8 Eyed Spy live from Hurrahs, 1980.

Artist:	TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS
Title:	Shut Up And Bleed
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 500CD

"A fully-realized, thoroughly saturated archival reissue compiled by Lydia and longtime confidante/agent provocateur Tom Garretson, collecting rare, live and unreleased material from el No Wave flagship band: Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. This seminal combo was lead by primal screamer and guitarist Lydia Lunch, an individual who has fought her artistic way through the decades -- always true to her own vision, and always brutally honest. In early 1978, artist and producer Brian Eno attended a series of shows put on to benefit the Artist's Space in Soho, and influenced Island Records to finance a compilation LP featuring four bands -- Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Contortions, Mars and DNA. The resulting recording, entitled No New York remains one of the most impressive and extraordinarily bold debuts of the time. Parallel to Teenage Jesus, Lunch formed Beirut Slump, a short-lived unit that released one single and recorded an album's worth of material, which are also included on this remarkable collection."

Artist:	LUNCH, LYDIA
Title:	Queen Of Siam
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 501CD

"Queen of Siam, Lydia Lunch's solo debut, was originally recorded in 1980. Featuring the noted talents of guitarist Robert Quine (Lou Reed, the Voidoids), multi-instrumentalist Pat Irwin (B-52's, Eight Eyed Spy), and the big band sound orchestra of Billy VerPlack (of Flintstones theme fame), the work proved to be a slap in the face to those critics awaiting a new Teenage Jesus-type of album from Lunch. Dirty, sophisticated, literary and raw, the album is today seen as the jewel in the crown of the no wave underground movement. Lunch created a sensual and hard-hitting musical landscape that startled even the most hardened of critics. After being out of print for years, Lunch's masterpiece returns with the original LP cover 'breasts of nails' pic for the first time on CD. Enhanced features on the disc include a live video performance of 'Knives in the Drain,' recorded live in London in 2004. Also included is a rare video of 'Gloomy Sunday' directed by Linda Di Franco, filmed in 1980."

Artist:	NIBLOCK + SUN RA & HIS SOLAR ARKESTRA, PHILL
Title:	The Magic Sun
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	DVD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 9861DVD

"The classic 1966 film by Phill Niblock featuring Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra, plus rare & exclusive Sun Ra footage, photos & audio 'proclamations'! Composer, photographer and filmmaker Phill Niblock's classic of experimental underground filmmaking with a sensational soundtrack by pianist Sun Ra and the members of his Solar Arkestra. Shot in the mid '60s, when the Arkestra was based in New York, this film was produced using a unique negative process and ultra-tight close-ups on the moving hands and mouths of the musicians. The result is a virtually abstract music film, mastered from a new print in all its incredibly sharp black & white glory. The Magic Sun DVD also includes a luminous, largely unseen photo gallery accompanied by 14:00 of unheard, self-recorded Ra audio: a truly 'inside' auto-bio interview; TRT approx 32:00." NTSC Region 0.

Previous Page Index of Labels Next Page

Artist:	VA
Title:	Out of Their Mouth Mk. 2
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 038CD

Artist:	VANDERMARK FIVE, THE
Title:	Single Piece Flow
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 047CD

Artist:	SHARP/CARBON, ELLIOTT
Title:	Interference
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 050CD

Artist:	SWANS
Title:	Kill The Child
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 057CD

Artist:	TIERS, WHARTON
Title:	Brighter Than Life
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 060CD

Artist:	SCISSOR GIRLS
Title:	We People Space With Phantoms
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 063CD

Artist:	CHROME CRANKS, THE
Title:	Diabolical Boogie (Singles, Demos & Rarities 1992BC-1998AD)
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALP 079CD

Artist:	GOD IS MY CO-PILOT
Title:	The Best Of
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 082CD

Artist:	O.S.T.
Title:	DUTCH HARBOR: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 085CD

Artist:	EX & AB BAARS, TERRIE
Title:	Hef
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 130CD

Artist:	BROTZMANN/PETER FRIIS NIELSEN/PEETER UUSKYLA, PETER
Title:	Medicina
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 149CD

Artist:	ZU & SPACEWAYS INC.
Title:	Radiale
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 151CD

Artist:	TRUE WEST
Title:	Hollywood Holiday Revisited
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 179CD

Artist:	ANDERSON, FRED QUARTET
Title:	The Milwaukee Tapes Vol. 1
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 204CD

Artist:	HONSINGER, STEVE BERESFORD, DAVID TOOP & TOSHINORI KONDO, TRISTAN
Title:	Double Indemnity/Imitation Of Life
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 224CD

Artist:	SIRONE
Title:	Sirone Live
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 253CD

Artist:	HAZEVOET/HAN BENNINK, KEES
Title:	Calling Down The Flevo Spirit
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 259CD

Artist:	BRANCA
Title:	Symphony Nos. 8 & 10 Live at the Kitchen
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	DVD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 4378DVD