Rating:
Genre:
Jazz
Release Date: 01/19/1999
Run Time: 44:38
This was
the Art Ensemble's breakthrough -- however short-lived -- onto a major U.S. label (
Atlantic), as well as a document of the freewheeling band's first appearance at an American festival (the
Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival). With activist
John Sinclair delivering the introduction, politics is in the air; the crowd is young and predisposed to radical ideas and
the Art Ensemble holds back nothing in a chaotic, meandering, exasperating, outrageous -- and, thus, always fascinating -- performance. The band seems to be clearing its collective throat in the first half of the concert, opening with a battering all-percussion prelude.
Roscoe Mitchell and
Malachi Favors go at it at length in a staggered, honking tenor sax/bass duet on
"Unanka," and
Mitchell ratchets up the gears into screeching overdrive on
"Oouffnoon." Finally, after a mocking intro by
Lester Bowie, the 15-minute
"Ohnedaruth" puts
the Art Ensemble on full, ultra-colorful, wailing, free-form display (complete with a few vocal obscenities) before signing off with the "relatively" straight-ahead
"Odwalla." It is interesting that
Atlantic would lease these way-out recordings to
Koch at a time (1998) when it was simultaneously putting out new, safer-sounding releases by the current
Art Ensemble and its members.
~Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide
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