Consumer Guide Album

Ornette Coleman: In All Languages [Caravan of Dreams, 1987]
Packed by their eternal leader into ten cuts averaging 3:22, Cherry-Haden-Higgins surge hotter at fifty than they ever dreamed old or new, as if harmolodic funk is an essentially structural principle, inhering more in the constraints of song conception that in the electric pulse. It's the Quartet disc that evokes the dense flow of Of Human Feelings, which leaves Prime Time room for patches of free cacophony as daunting as the Quartet in its youth. Defining both bands is the natural iconoclasm and indefatigable lyricism of the fifty-seven-year-old rebel who's probably the most widely respected musician in the world, and who somehow doesn't get any less amazing as a result. A