2012 · Album
Early Combinations
Recorded 1960s · Nessa · Produced by Unknown
Searching in the Shadows of Sound
Art Ensemble of Chicago announces itself here with raw invention and no apologies for the mess.
Early Combinations captures the Art Ensemble of Chicago when they were still figuring out who they were, and that uncertainty is exactly what makes it worth hearing. This isn't the polished, theatrical version of the group you might know from later records. What you get here is a band working through ideas in real time, mixing free improvisation with bebop structures, adding theatrical touches and unconventional instruments without the confidence that comes from doing it a hundred times before. It sounds loose because it is loose, but there's real intention underneath the sprawl.
The group moves between stretches of genuine freedom—horns wailing without predetermined harmonic centers, rhythms that shift and resettle—and moments where the bebop language reasserts itself, giving things shape before they dissolve again. There's percussion that sounds like it wandered in from somewhere else entirely, voices used as pure texture rather than vehicles for lyrics. None of this is smooth, and some of it probably shouldn't work, but the willingness to sound uncertain, even clumsy, is part of what makes the record breathe. You hear them discovering what their combination of voices and instruments can do when they stop worrying about whether it sounds like anything anyone's heard before.
This is an early record, definitely. It's not the place to start if you want the fully realized Art Ensemble sound, but it's essential if you want to understand how they got there. Committed listeners will find something bracing in these early combinations—not a masterpiece, but a genuine document of artists working without a net, testing boundaries, and occasionally breaking through into something genuinely strange.
