Dimensions Extensions LP

Blue Note sat on this one for nearly twenty years, shelving the 1967 session until pieces leaked out on the Involution compilation and the full record finally surfaced in 1986. Sam Rivers built six dense, freely structured tracks with Donald Byrd, Julian Priester, James Spaulding, Cecil McBee and Steve Ellington, avant-garde jazz that took its time getting heard. Joe Harley's Tone Poet reissue returns it to the Van Gelder tapes properly. Worth the wait, twice over.