condition (records/cover): NM / EX

Gatefold sleeve. Auto-coupled 1/4 - 2/3 sides

Double LP gathering prime 1969 Paris material from the Art Ensemble of Chicago's European exile - the season when four Chicagoans with a truckload of instruments landed in France and recorded at a pace that still seems physically impossible: a dozen-plus albums in a matter of months, most of them classics. The Arista Freedom edition did honest service bringing this music to the American racks in the seventies, in the label's classic gatefold treatment with proper documentation - for many listeners of that generation, these reissues were the first door into the AEC universe. Little instruments, huge silences, sudden eruptions, deep blues memory: the whole Ensemble method in generous double-disc documentation, sequenced for immersion.

For anyone building the Paris-period shelf without chasing four-figure originals, this remains the sensible and very satisfying route - and the music loses nothing whatsoever in the translation. Two LPs of the great exile at full creative boil.