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Summary: Musick hath charms...
Comment: ...to awaken the savage beast. Or to make the somnolent beast savage once more. After the cool/hot intellectuality of be-bop, the classical musician's inevitable favorite jazz repertoire, where could jazz have gone but to Albert Ayler?
One previous reviewer declared that Ayler paid no attention to the past of jazz or of music at large. It couldn't be farther from the truth. Ayler went straight back to the lower Mississippi, the muddy bottom, the House of the Rising Sun, to reconnect jazz to its raw origins, to the sound of a slave band funeral procession, half wailing in grief, half rollicking in anticipation of a long night's drunk.
Ayler's tone on his sax is blatantly crude. He means it to be so. He has no stomach for prettiness. Just listen to the few seconds of the amazon samples. You'll get the idea. You'll instantly hate it like George W's simian grin, or you'll gasp, as I did the first time I heard Ayler, and shout out "This is what jazz almost forgot about!"
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Summary: albert has fun
Comment: Albert unquestionably took jazz to its 'logical' conclusion with his caustic fire-breathing, not for the faint of heart. This disk shows him in all his split-tone howling speaking-in-tongues refinement, with powerful backing by Sunny Murray's light-as-knitting-needles-playing and Gary Peacock's inventive bass antics. Rarely if ever in jazz will you hear a trio speak to one another so intricately; Ayler recorded many fine sides, but this surely stands among his best. Three songs are fast, one slow, though it goes into the same turgid territory of the others. But familiar with his entire catalog, you get the sense that Albert's having a heck of a lot of fun here with his odd micro-melodies, frantic peals and squeals of notes (that yes, were a huge influence on Coltrane, who was quoted as saying that Ayler got beyond what he was capable of playing). Music for that rainy day? If it's raining fire and the four horsemen are prancing on the rooftop - a great album with no apologies. (For those of you who love Ayler, be sure to check out Charles Gayle's early work. I saw him live, first row, and with his first gutteral tenor blast he pinned me to the seat and kept me there, "bringing it home" from first blast to final scream - yow!)
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Summary: MY FAVORITE ALBUM
Comment: No joke - this is the single greatest piece of art I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. When I first listened to this album, I had had some previous exposure to Ayler's style, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. But nothing could have prepared me for those first few otherworldy sounds to escape his horn, which gradually transform into the main melody for the classic song "Ghosts." When I heard that, I stopped what I was doing and my jaw DROPPED to the floor. "This is it," I thought. "I've FOUND it!"
There are a LOT of ways to listen to this album. Most people who hear it interpret is as a release of aggression and pain, but that really wasn't Alyer's intention. He was simply doing the only thing he COULD do, which was to play directly from his heart and soul without any concern for others' expectations. His playing was HIM. Many musicians have learned from his approach and have accomplished great things, but to this day Ayler's playing remains the strongest and the best.
As for the other two players on this album, drummer Sonny Murray and bassist Gary Peacock, I have only positive things to say as well. The sound that this trio attained stands as one of the greatest achievements in music. I'm not going to even attempt to elaborate on this - just LISTEN (!!!) and you will hear what I mean.
One last thought to close out this review: This is the closest thing to pure love that I have ever experienced through sound alone.
But words are meaningless when it comes to music, so I'll cut the jibber-jabber and let's just LISTEN, shall we?
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Summary: A correction to even further validate this recording
Comment: The reviewer "El Lagarto" may want to note that the release date of John Coltrane's "Ascension," his first proper free jazz album and first major foray into the avant-garde, is June 28, 1965. "Spiritual Unity" precedes that album by approximately a year, and if I am not mistaken, Coltrane cited Ayler as an influence which helped vault him into his late period recordings.
This recording is a masterpiece and must have been a revelation at the time to all with open ears. For an even more complete and brilliant document of Ayler's influential sound and immense presence, check out the Complete Greenwich Village recordings on Impulse! That is all for now.
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Summary: Even an Olympic swimmer might not like the Ocean
Comment: This album skipped a few (hundred?) decades and took jazz straight to its logical conclusion. Fast forward several million years, far past our own epoch in this particular cosmic cycle, and you will hear this album playing as the universe dissipates back into its perfectly entropic state.
Don't get me wrong, this is not an album I listen to often. You wouldn't really play it in the car or at a party (unless it's a REALLY good party). This one takes some acclimation...like astronaut camp.
Yeah it's noisy and chaotic, but make no mistake: there is DEFINITELY music here. It's amazing that you can even hear it, let alone that someone actually wrote it, but it's here. Use with caution. This album will liberate your mind and incite a riot in your head, if you let it.
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