Even though I think all of the group’s members are incredible players and a few of their group albums are free jazz masterpieces, I still really struggle with much of the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s music. A good portion of their most early work as a group sounds to me like collections of interesting elements thrown together in a haphazard way. They eventually honed in on what they were trying to do and became fairly consistent at tapping into that, but their early stuff, including their debut album A Jackson in Your House from 1969, is more noteworthy as a look into the group’s evolution than as a standalone recording.
Prior to A Jackson in
Your House, the members of the AEC had collaborated on several albums by
the group’s individual members starting with the Roscoe Mitchell Sextet’s
brilliantly iconoclastic Sound in
1966. While these albums are great, they each clearly have one leader steering
the group’s music, whether it be Mitchell (on Sound and Congliptious)
or Lester Bowie (on Numbers 1&2).
Their first recorded forays under the AEC name and their BYG albums especially
show their first attempts to perform truly leaderless music. It took a few
years to really work out the kinks in this democratic approach to their art.
