Sam Rivers: Dimensions & Extensions (180g) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

A 180g pressing in a gatefold jacket, mastered by Cohearent Audio. Recorded in 1967 with Donald Byrd, Julian Priester, James Spaulding, Cecil McBee and Steve Ellington, it sat in the Blue Note vaults for years, which makes it one of the label's great lost records.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Mastered at Cohearent Audio
• Original cover art

About the album

Sam Rivers cut this at Rudy Van Gelder's studio on March 17, 1967, with a front line of Donald Byrd, Julian Priester and James Spaulding, and Blue Note scheduled it for that year. Then it vanished. The tracks finally surfaced in 1975 on Involution, a double LP shared with an Andrew Hill session, and the album only appeared as intended, with its own cover and catalogue number, in 1986.

It was worth the wait. Rivers wrote all six pieces, and they sit right on the line between hard bop and the avant-garde: tight, knotty heads that fling the soloists out into open space, with Rivers switching between tenor, soprano and flute. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine called him "one of the early giants of the avant-garde". Nineteen years in a drawer, and it still sounds ahead of schedule.

Tracklist

Listen

Out September 4, 2026 on Blue Note (cat# 6512482), a reissue of the album recorded in 1967.