People in Sorrow cover

People in Sorrow

Released

During their sojourn in Paris, which lasted from 1969 to early 1972, the Art Ensemble recorded over a dozen albums; this is among the most striking. A single 40-minute piece stretched across two sides of vinyl, it was made before drummer Famoudou Don Moye joined, so it begins as a meditative, sparse soundscape — the horns whisper and keen as Malachi Favors’ bass rumbles along and occasional splashes of hand-held percussion mark intervals — but in its final third it builds to multi-horn polyphony, sometimes quite beautiful, as one member, likely Roscoe Mitchell, subverts it all by producing a seemingly endless wavering tone like a malfunctioning door-buzzer from an unidentified reed instrument.

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
Lux cover

Lux

Aluk Todolo
Audentity cover

Audentity

Klaus Schulze
Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet cover

Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet

Kronos Quartet, Aki Takahashi
Crumbling Brain cover

Crumbling Brain

Full Blast, Peter Brötzmann
Under the Sun cover

Under the Sun

Human Arts Ensemble
Science Fiction cover

Science Fiction

Ornette Coleman
The Owner of the River Bank cover

The Owner of the River Bank

Cecil Taylor, Italian Instabile Orchestra