Roscoe Mitchell

The Flow Of Things is a quartet record by Roscoe Mitchell recorded at two venues in 1986, with pianist Jodie Christian, bassist Malachi Favors and drummer Steve McCall, released by Black Saint in 1987. Mitchell and Favors were founding members of the AACM in Chicago, and both played in the Art Ensemble of Chicago. McCall was the drummer of the trio Air. The title piece appears in three separate performances taken from two dates, so one Mitchell composition can be heard three times by the same band.

Two tracks were recorded at the Raccoon Club on September 7, 1986, and the other two at the Goetz Theater in Chicago on June 29, 1986, with Dan Richardson as engineer, Giovanni Bonandrini producing and notes by Leo Krumpholz. Mitchell plays soprano and alto saxophone. The Flow Of Things No. 1 and No. 2, both from the Raccoon Club, run about ten minutes each. Cards For Quartet, at nine minutes, recorded at the Goetz Theater, is the one piece not drawn from the title work. The Flow Of Things No. 3, from the Goetz Theater, closes the album at over thirteen minutes. The cornetist and composer Taylor Ho Bynum, writing in 2013, remembered it as the first Mitchell album he bought: "Quite frankly, it scared the hell out of me (as revolutionary art is supposed to do)". He described the title track, in its three takes, as "an unrelenting wave of sound".

Black Saint CD 120090-2, which Discogs lists as a reissue of the album first released on LP in 1987 as BSR 0090.