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“What one imagines the great Art Ensemble of Chicago would have sounded like if asked to write a ‘hit.'” – Piotr Orlov, AFROPUNK

Bottle Tree is a new collaboration conjured from the Southside Chicago storefront chapel of singer/scholar A.M. Frison and composer/cornetist Ben Lamar Gay.

With Italian expat Tommaso Moretti on traps, the sound-rendered folklore of Bottle Tree embodies a heart beating to West African mutated funk with the spirit of avant-garde jazz and a Motown-molded melodic mind — like a futuristic fantasy of Stevie Wonder backed by Don Cherry and Novos Baianos in the early 1970s.

“Open Secret,” the lead single from their forthcoming full-length album, is an agnostic prayer penned by Frison against false borders between faiths.