Blood on the Leaf: Opus No. 1 cover

Blood on the Leaf: Opus No. 1

Released

When the late critic Greg Tate formed this group, the concept was deceptively simple: make music that was spiritual kin to Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, conjured through conducted improvisation, a methodology borrowed from Lawrence “Butch” Morris. The results sound nothing like electric Miles, and often don’t sound improvised at all. This is swirling jazz-rock/art-soul, like Westbound-era Funkadelic performing a jazz mass, with Lee Perry at the mixing board. Voices and instruments drift in and out as though heard in a dream, honoring no single tradition while embracing them all — the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s motto “Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future” applies.

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
Tre cover

Tre

Archimedes Badkar
On the Corner cover

On the Corner

Miles Davis
Spiral Mercury cover

Spiral Mercury

Chicago/São Paulo Underground, Pharoah Sanders
Codona cover

Codona

Collin Walcott, Codona, Naná Vasconcelos, Don Cherry
Memory / Vision cover

Memory / Vision

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble
Feel cover

Feel

George Duke
Electric Byrd cover

Electric Byrd

Donald Byrd
Emergency Exit cover

Emergency Exit

Throttle Elevator Music
Utica Box cover

Utica Box

Dan Weiss
The Black Peril cover

The Black Peril

Soweto Kinch