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