For John Corbett ‘one of the most luminous albums of creative music ever made’, this forty-minute work by the four-piece — Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors — is surely the apex of the fourteen studio albums recorded by the Art Ensemble during their two years’ sojourn in France.
‘Still-startling music, which uses space, dynamics, and a wide range of emotions expertly’ (AllMusic).
‘Great Black Music’, and funny.
Characteristically brilliant ebullience from the Art Ensemble trumpeter in 1974, with John Hicks (doing Hello Dolly as a duet), John Stubblefield, bro Joseph Bowie from Defunkt, Julius Hemphill (on Ornette’s Lonely Woman), Bob Stewart, Cecil McBee, Jerome Cooper, Charles Shaw and Phillip Wilson.
A stunning complement to Theme De Yoyo!
Panou was an activist and actor, in Paris from Benin; he plays a refuse collector in Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend. His texts here cross existentialism and Black Power like a knockabout Richard Wright, with an extra shot of anti-colonialism. Recorded by Pierre Barouh for Saravah, in the same months as its classic Comme A La Radio LP with Brigitte Fontaine, furthering the AEC’s rowdily brilliant elaborations of Leroy Jones’ Black Dada Nihilismus.
It’s a scorcher; hotly recommended.