Search - Art Ensemble of Chicago :: Third Decade

Different visions of the band's roots and possibilities emerge in this 1984 recording. The piece "Funky AECO" is a populist delight, a funk riff driven along by Malachi Favors's electric bass and Don Moye's precisely idiomatic backbeat, then given a surreal push by the unlikely and elephantine sound of Roscoe Mitchell's bass saxophone, with sly inflections contributed by Lester Bowie's trumpet. Joseph Jarman's "Prayer for Jimbo Kwesi" is an utterly different pleasure, a haunting African-flavored tune that weds its open harmonies and repeating melody to subtle use of flutes and synthesizers. Another moment of great subtlety arises in Bowie's refined invocation of Miles Davis in "The Bell Thing." --Stuart Broomer