Customer Reviews

Major Works of John Coltrane: Ascension 1 & 2 / Om / Kulu Se Mama / Selflessness

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Muscially this is incredible (just refer to the individual albums for reviews by me and others).

However, I feel compelled to say some words about the concept of amalgamating these recordings.

Firstly, in doing so, you miss out on the orginal liner notes and artwork. For example, the poem in Kula Se Mama. Impulse! should be severely punished for this. Once again they have treated Coltranes work with a total lack of respect. (What is even worse is that the box set of the Classic Coltrane Quartet material lacks the poem for A Love Supreme).

Secondly, I would only advice you to buy this if you are (1) not interested in the above and (2) already own the Classic Quartet box set, which contains the remaining tracks from the Kula Se Mama album. Otherwise, you are going to want the original albums.

Thirdly, but how else does one get hold of Om? This is a con by Impulse! if you ask me.

Fourthly, regarding 'Om' and the review by DMG, Swindon UK. I think this reviewer has lost the plot completely. Recall that Coltrane once said that he believed in ALL RELIGIONS. I am extremely unreligious and still dig it!

Finally, it should a crime to call his 'major works'. This doesn't make sense at all. Does a compliation really need both Ascensions? What about the missing A Love Supreme or Meditations or Interstellar Space. And then what about all of the non-Impulse! recordings generally considered to be major works (Giant Steps, My favourite things etc).

Please don't buy out of protest and email Impulse! to encourage them to release Om in a sensible way.

Miss UK 1802

Ascension is one of those works in the jazz canon that is easier to admire than to truly like. It was important in launching the careers of Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and several other musicians, and spawned an important genre of avant-garde music. It had a documented effect on many acid rock bands of the 60s, notably the Dead and Pink Floyd (with Syd Barrett). And yet, though I have been a fan of avant-garde jazz since I was a teenager,though I admire the musicianship on the Ascension cuts, and find some of the solos transcendent (Sanders, Shepp, Trane of course) this is not a work that I have ever come back to with any regularity. Trane is trying something different here. This is the birth of the "energy" jazz movement of the 60s...music without conventional pulse, form or structure...music completely of the moment. While this is not cacophonous (contrary to opinions expressed below a careful listener will discover many points of contact between the horns in the collective improvs) it is pretty free, just a riff at the beginning and a soloist/collective improv structure. The work is a piece very much of it's time, the "do your own thing" 60s. In many ways you have to look at it as less of a musical event and more of a spirit raising ceremony (spirit raising in the Yoruba sense.) The whoops and wails of the music have much more to do with a shamanic ritual than with the mightclub based music of the hard bop era.

Having two versions of the Ascension session is interesting. In many ways, the alternate version is superior...I certainly like Trane's solo there better. But both recordings are things that I will probably only put on ocasionally, and rarely for sheer enjoyment.

The other works on the CD are in the same vein as Ascension, but easier to take. Om is a great piece...done in the "suite" style of most of Coltrane's late pieces such as a Love Supreme and Meditations. The presence of Donald Garrett adds some mystery to the group sound. I could do without the introduction and ending, they sound a little silly and dated, but the blowing on the session is really good, especially from Pharoah, who is at his wild best. (If you think it is easy to create the shrieking split tones that he manages, try it yourself. It's an art!)

My favorite cuts on the album come from Coltrane's "Kula Se Mama" album. The presence of added percussion on Kula gives the work an overtly African feel, heightening it's shamanistic quality. Selflessness is also a great piece...recalling the Coltrane of the modal period, but with a wider and rougher sax tone. Trane has a beautiful full throated sax scream that can haunt your dreams.

So yes, if you are already into Coltrane, get this album. You should know Ascension and one listening won't make it. The other works on the album are all very good and things that you will probably come back to. But if you are new to Trane, DON'T START HERE. I can't stress that enough! Start with his more conventional work, Giant Steps or My Favorite Things are good start off points. If you like those, then try the early Impulse albums, Live at the Village Vangard, Cresent, A Love Supreme, the Africa/Brass Sessions. And by all means buy his Ballads. This is a beautiful and very traditional album. Only when you've explored these sessions thoughroughly should you try to tackle this double set. Otherwise, you run the risk of dismissing this important and moving artist, as many of the reviewers on this page have. And that would be a tragedy!

When I was just 15 I bought this set.....I was just getting into jazz, i'd already heard the 'requistes': "Giant Steps" and "Kind of Blue". However, for some strange reason, I went and bought this, this that the title "Major Works of John Coltrane" meant that these would be jazz symphonies of some sort. Boy was I unprepared for this music! "Ascension part 1" opens the double disc set. It's not easy to describe this music. The skeptic would say that Coltrane just wrote a few riffs, got a bunch of people in one recording studio, and played for 40 minutes without practice or anything, just making noise. That wouldn't be the wrong way to view it......but it's deeper than this. Although as a whole this music even after several years is still hard to handle, there are moments in the music of such beauty and(even) majesty, even more moments of chaos, there's everything known to mankind, and more that we can't understand. All of this is one 38 minute track. It is actually pretty straight-forward for free jazz: the solos and all are in a certain order. There are saxophones, trumpets, basses, drums....some of the people here aren't really known for free form jazz, like Freddie Hubbard. The double bass solo is interesting, there's a blend of bowed and straight bass. The piano solo is very cool, it doesn't sound improvised very much, but it's kinda surprising after the 30 minutes of pounded notes and filler noise from the piano. And the brass sound is HUGE, i've never heard anything so dense, so heavy. It's great. "Om" is the only other track on disc one. It really is bizzare, the most unsettling track of all. There are various percussion sounds, a recited poem inspired by some deep Eastern religion....and a lot of saxophone. I read somewhere that Coltrane took ... for the first time before the performance here, which could maybe describe his disturbing 8-10 minute solo here. He squeals, squeaks, blows, make some very strange noises, but it's very effective. Pharoah Sanders is pretty crazy himself here, but not as much. There's some flute playing throughout that's pretty messed up as well. Then some more poetry and the disaster fades away......now for disc two. It starts with "Ascension take 2".....it's very much like the first take, same musicians, probably recorded right after take one. There are some differences, such as solo order, and there are some sounds that I couldn't hear in the first one, but otherwise very much the same. Coltrane had both takes issued back when they originally came out! "Kulu Se Mama" is the most listenable music so far, it starts out with some singing in some tongue that i'm unfamiliar with, lots of percussion throughout, lots of drums. This music is very trance-like: it will put you to sleep, not because it's boring but because of the atonal quality to it, it doesn't move around and shift very much. And it's long as well, nearly 20 minutes long. "Selflessness" is perhaps the most commmercial track, which isn't say much actually! It's beautiful though, the melodies and the progression and everything. Now, in summary.......I can't even begin to imagine how people reacted to this music when it came out in 1965. This sound is radical, different, daring, all kinds of things. It's a far cry from Coltrane's earlier work....more like ... work. I'm surprised this music hasn't been as contoversial as ... fusion work in the late 60's through mid 70's, it's so much more different than anything else i've heard....I know it's 'free jazz' but still. I don't suggest that mere mortals buy this music, only those with an extremely open mind, those who are probably ..., people who aren't sensitive to sound, who can stomach a lot of sound, who aren't wusses! It's not music for lovers, or music for lounge lizards.....keep this music in your stereo, don't play it in public. People will scream, run away, maybe stay long enough to listen and then criticize. I've had people tell me it sounds like a school band rehearsing, that it's noise, all sorts of things. Very few people will understand it...if your'e one of those .... But it's beautiful, it's dangerous, it's pretty, it's ugly, it's everything. Thank you.

With all due respect to Molman, who appears to have immaculate taste in music, you do this music a grave disservice my friend. This is the point where many Coltrane devotees turn off, and even get offended in the same way Beethoven's audience was confused by the Grosse Fuge. But it is also where some like me get the most excited, where the magic really starts, By this point Coltrane no longer considered himself a jazz musician, he was searching for a universal music and a new musical language, I think he succeeded and that later historians, maybe decades from now will realise this (1965 until his death) was the most important period of his artistry. It owes nothing to what came before it, sure it has echoes of African music and free jazz, quotes from the Vedas, but it makes Ornette Coleman (who in all fairness I admire very greatly) sound very conservative, and transcends all other musics of it's time. I understand the point of view of those who reject this music, but I think they do themselves a grave disservice. Check this out, it is a great bargain for all the music you get, OM and Kulu Se Mama are fantastic, and Ascension is one of the key pieces of the Coltrane Ouerve. If it's too much for you give it a try a year later, sometimes it takes people a while, sometimes it just isn't someones cup of tea. But within the atonality there are moments of such beauty, such intensity, that put all the New music and serialist art composers to shame (whom I also admire greatly). I love this music passionatly.

Soon after becoming a Coltrane fan I purchased this set, knowing little about the "historical significance" that these tracks had. Being a fan of free music, I was initially open to the ideas, and found entirely new vistas in musical listening available to me. There are numerous bad reviews for these CD's, probably because they're the most aesthetically unpleasing of any Coltrane released- and extremely challenging. However, one will be surprised if you allow Sanders and Coltrane say what they mean to say. The difficulty, I think, in open perception of these sorts of albums, compared with similarly unaesthetic works by abstract expressionists, is endurance in listening, which is why art like this has only caught on to a certain segment of the populace in movies/music- there's a need for coherant form to facilitate the demands in time placed upon you. Being a walkman man, I simply cannot listen to forty minutes of Ascension, which is a shame. As for these CD's themselves: they are revelatory in their statements, but imperfect. These are men playing, not Gods- and these men have just had some very profound ideas about the nature of their particular instruments and the way they can be used. "Om" is often belittled as the worst Coltrane recording, and I think this is an arbitrary statement by critics "nervous" about elevating all free-jazz to the five star level. What makes bad free-jazz, then, if "Om" is good? I don't really know- however I acknowledge the energy and instrumental techniques here "signify" something definite. This makes them more than "nails across a chalkboard". The soloing instruments become representative of human consciousness- Coltrane seems to be like a constant movement, a fluid motion through time. Sanders is a shrieking, diminuitive glance into the ineffable. The din of horns is self-awareness in, perhaps, an impersonal or even possibly malignant universe. Note that these ideas are not new- this is philosophy one can find in many cultures at many times. However, I might venture to say that they were never previously expressed in a wordless musical form, and the introspection they can induce is entirely different than the introspection that Goethe or Nietsche. Looking at a Jackson Pollack painting takes only a moment, and signifies something immediately- Ascension takes 40 minutes, and continually evolves in one's ear into something new.

"Ascension" is a difficult work to review. While the music is challenging and the playing is (as always, with Coltrane) otherworldly, the freedom granted by these recordings is too much to these ears. Diehards should certainly have a copy, although it represents a much freer vision than any of Trane's other recordings. Fans of his later work will no doubt eat up "The Major Works of...", and though his playing is incandescent throughout, I feel that this is an experiment which yielded interesting but ultimately inaccessible results. Buy "Meditations" and Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" first, and then approach this, but know what you're getting into.

I don't claim to be able to understand this music, but I respect it greatly. Every time I listen the any of the later (or earlier for that matter) works of Coltrane, my appreciation and understanding of it grows. If you can't understand the metaphysical inflection of Coltrane's later works, that's only normal. If you think that it's nothing but noise, and would go so far as to publicly discredit it, than you must think very highly of your own musicality. I'd really love to hear any of you play music that powerful.

This two disc set contains (in the two versions of 'Ascension') the most challenging of all John's work on record. These two 40 minute 'tracks' have often been compared to Coleman's 'Free Jazz', but, in my view this is misleading. 'Ascension' alternates free (but co-ordinated) blowing by a large group with individual solos - some of which have a haunting beauty, made more effective by their placing in between the all-out apparent chaos of the ensemble passages. Version two of this piece was my first introduction to John's work, thirty years ago - I found it a painful, but ultimately rewarding experience then, and a continued source of pleasure and novelty now. Not a starting place, but, in the end, a statement of a powerful and committed musical idea. John Coltrane went in a different direction after this - maybe he'd said all there was to say in this particular way.

One of the problems with reviewing a recording with the historical mythology surrounding this one is that if you don't like it, you open yourself up to derision as someone who just "doesn't get it" or, from more sensitive people, someone who must be new to John Coltrane. I "get it" and have enjoyed practically everything that Coltrane produced up until 1965 for several decades, but I find the works of his last years completely beyond my definition of music. While enjoying a lot of music that is quite "free" but not completely without form (Coleman's Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century, Cecil Taylor's Jazz Advance and much of Unit Structures, etc.), I have difficulty with works that completely abandon all forms of structure, particularly harmonic structure. I respect Coltrane's need to keep pushing the envelope and develop a style that got him closer and closer to his vision of god, but if you analyze this album purely on what is happening on an objective level, this is truly the Emperor's new clothes. The rhythm section merely puts down a pattern (drawn mostly from the vastly superior Love Supreme) and stays there while everyone else just tries to find their way and follow Coltrane's lead, usually without much success. No, if you are looking for something adventurous, please don't start here as this may turn you off progressive jazz forever. Try one of the Coleman's recordings cited above first.

I purchased this 2 CD set to get my hands on Om. I already owned the 24 bit remasters of Ascension and Kulu Se' Mama (includes Selflessness). All of those pieces are fantastic, check out my reviews of those 2 CDs. Out of all of this music, Selflessness is probably my favorite... it must be because I play it all the time, especially when walking the dog in the early morning. It's such joyful music.

Om is a whole different story. I wanted this for a couple of reasons but mainly because it included many of the additional musicians heard on Selflessness and Kulu Se' Mama. Om was also recorded just 2 weeks earlier than those two pieces on Oct 1, 1965 by a very young engineer (22 years of age I think) at Camelot Studios in Lynwood Washington , a suburb of Seattle. The recording was made the day that followed the performance at the Penthouse that was released as Live in Seattle. The music is rather similar to that found on the piece titled "Evolution" from the Live In Seattle set. Yet it is far more mysterious sounding. This is by far the weirdest music in the Coltrane catalog (that's a good thing people).

Om is full of odd sounds that I just can't put my finger on. Sounds that don't sound like any particular instrument, like something that sounds like a lost bleating lamb that appears quietly behind Tyner's solo, the weird resonating "frying pan" percussion that appear here and there. Folks like to compare Om to Ascension but I just don't think that's a strong comparison at all. Sure, the music is "free" and is more about sound sculpting than playing in particular keys over particular harmonic constructs. But there is something very different going on here, it's a very mysterious kind of atmosphere. The pair of acoustic basses play arco during the bass solo, there are all sorts of weird howls and shrieks in the background - like a musical haunted house of sorts. I'm a musician (40 years) and have no idea how those sounds are being made.

I first owned Om on vinyl when I was about 20 years of age. I had just emerged into the world after being reared in a Bible thumping family that I had not yet realized was far more disturbed than any music I could ever listen to. Om frightened me. It sounded demonic, full of darkness. I got rid of it almost immediately. Of course, that was ridiculous. Om isn't demonic at all, but it is very, very different. Oh, and weird to!

Anyway, I highly recommend the 24 bit remaster copies of Ascension and Kulu Se' Mama, but you definitely want Om as well IF you are into the music Trane made after the spring of 1965, this is a must have.