Customer Reviews

Spiritual Unity

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tenor saxaphonist Albert Ayler recorded many powerful albums in his time, "Spiritual Unity" is probably his first truly great record. Featuring a trio of Gary Peacock (bass) and Sunny Murry (drums), this is a band with a tight rapport who is able to really get inside the music. Murray, one of the true free jazz master drummers, manages to suggest time while not constraining himself to it, and Peacock liberates himself altogether from traditional bass roles-- he plays in a free associative pattern behind behind Ayler. What is most important about this trio is that this is the first time Ayler's band seems to actually "get" what he's doing and he can project with full confidence because he's not being held back by the band.

The best evidence of this is probably Ayler's solo in "The Wizard"-- he cuts loose completely, bringing forth every groan and scream he can coax from his sax before yielding to a brief bass solo. Of the rest, "Spirits" gets a stunning reading, with Ayler's wide vibrato injecting a high level of emotive content into the music and Peacock's sympathetic arco/pizzicato accompaniment really holding firm. Of the two takes of "Ghosts" on the album, the former is much more relaxed, with Ayler's unaccompanied intro and relatively restrained soloing, the latter is extremely aggressive, filled with the idiom of Ayler's music, twisgting and turning and really getting in and around the piece.

This reissue, on the resurrected ESP Disk label, is essential. Remastered from the original tapes removed from a vault for the first time, it sounds fantastic-- the muted drum sound seems to have been somewhat repaired, and more of the subtleties of Murray's playing can be heard, in fact the entire record is crisp, clean and sounds superior to even the fantastic remastering on Ayler's Impulse recordings.

Like all of Ayler's catalog, "Spiritual Unity" is a difficult album, but its aprobably a good place to start-- it shows an artist at the height of his powers. Get this release not the others, its well worth the investment. Recommended.

Certain albums seemed destined to capture the public's imagination and win widespread, unequivocal acceptance almost instantaneously. One thinks, for example, of Tapestry by Carole King, Rumors from Fleetwood Mac, and the Johnny Cash landmark effort, At Folsom Prison.

Others, like Brilliant Corners (Thelonious Monk) and Sail Away (Randy Newman) required time, tireless advocacy on the part of convinced music critics, and risk-taking listeners before assuming the iconic status they enjoy today.

Spiritual Unity, which may be Albert Ayler's Guernica, falls into neither category. It was born in obscurity where it has lived ever since, like a prisoner whose slim hopes are sustained only by infrequent visits from family members.

Jazz listeners are a small subset of all music listeners, but jazz itself is a big tent covering various splinter groups. There are those who believe that the sun set on real jazz when Sidney Bechet died. The majority of jazz lovers consider the WWII big band years of Basie and Ellington to be the halcyon era. Hipsters and flipsters latched onto Bop, but many, including Cab Calloway, rejected Bird and Diz. Cab Calloway called Bop "Chinese music."

The herd of jazz enthusiasts was culled even further by the arrival of John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and others who expressed a wanton disregard for melodic traditions. For many, Coltrane's squawks, squeals, and rapid fire scales were indistinguishable from underwater parachuting - an idea whose time hasn't come. However, Coltrane's disciples followed him and followed the horn players he influenced, like Roland Kirk. By now the herd, though fiercely loyal, was tiny. Then came Ayler.

Ayler blew with maniacal intensity, passion, delirious joy, and complete disrespect for the past. He played as though he'd never heard anyone else play, as if he'd discovered a horn in the desert and was single-handedly inventing music. Ayler did not play from his head or even his heart but directly from his soul. In jazz clubs around Manhattan cries of, "Check please," and, "I think I hear my mommy calling me," and, "Oops, this is my stop," rang out like chimes, followed soon thereafter by hasty retreats.

In a sense, Ayler took abstract jazz to its absolute breaking point; it really can't get much further out than this without sounding like jets warming up on a runway. His music defies evaluation, it even defies judgment. Almost everyone hates it and would pay to not have to hear it. Those who love it, as I do, respond to a spiritual awakening and freedom transcending the bars and dots on sheet music, pointing straight to the next world. For me, this is astonishing, glorious music, but then, I'm in a small herd.

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.

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.

Blaster Death should stick to reviewing Kenny G albums if he can't hear music on this recording. Not only should Spiritual Unity be placed in the top 100 jazz albums of all time I would go as far as to place it in the top 10. Then again, if real art scares you perhaps you should stick with Kenny G.

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 playing, 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 composition "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?

On July 10th of 1964, Albert Ayler, Gary Peacock, and Sunny Murray walked into the tiny studio of the newly formed ESP label. The result was "Spiritual Unity" - a concise, confident, and beautifully crafted musical statement. Words can't really do this album justice, the interaction among the musicians - Sunny Murray's drumming and Gary Peacock's bass in particular, is astounding. Murray doesn't keep time in any traditional sense; his subtle drumming interacts and intertwines with Peacock's bass and creates an subdued, undulating undercurrent for Ayler's sax. Loose marching themes are played by Ayler, and you'd swear that you have heard these simple melodies before. The themes are stated and restated, then deconstructed, then torn to shreds, left completely behind with screams of jagged improvisations... and then the themes are restated. The results are mesmerizing and transformative.

The recording engineer apparently fled the control booth during the recording to avoid the chaos. For reasons unknown, he also thought that the recording was a demo and recorded it in mono instead of stereo. I found this out after I had owned the album for several months, listening to the entire thing twice every day on my bus commute to work (it was exactly the right length), and I honestly never noticed that it wasn't in stereo - which is amazing particularly since I was listening to it on headphones. The communication among the musicians is so spellbinding I didn't notice. Play it loud. (review updated Jan 2009)

I will start this review with the disclaimer that I am not a big fan of free jazz. There is no sure reason why, but I just don't enjoy free jazz as much as "regular" jazz. That said, this recording has some truly lucid and interesting moments which gives me hope that I will one day understand this music. Ayler is one of the more well-regarded free jazz musicians, probably because his chops are impeccable and his backing band members are only of the highest caliber. (For example, this CD features Gary Peacock, a musician who has been making a name for himself for fifty years or so, playing with such legends as Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, and Art Pepper, among others - hard to argue with that pedigree.) In this work, Ayler has put together some fascinating sonic tomes that allow the listener to "read" them, or, in some cases, be read to. The first "Ghosts" sets a placid, but vibrant mood. "The Wizard" then digs into you, until Peacock's bass takes over in "Spirits", a rousingly subtle (or subtley rousing) exploration of mood through intimation. Finally, the second "Ghosts" brings everything back to the start, to allow Albert to again state a clear theme, break it completely apart into a piled up jumble, then put it all back together again, which is also exactly the effect achieved by having the album start and end on the same song. If nothing else, it is intriguing and stimulating. The recording is executed cleanly, and there are a lot of detailed liner notes that unfortunately focus too much on the record company (ESP) and not enough on Ayler, but which I still found educational. Three stars may seem kind of a poor ranking, but actually, I consider it to be three and a half, and quite high for this type of recording. I'm sure any fan of free jazz will love this work and wish they could give it ten stars, but for me, it just isn't something I will go back to very often, at least, not in this stage of my musical education. Still, I recommend this as a good candidate for addition to any jazz music collection, free jazz fan or not.

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!)

Fiery, aggressive and deeply passionate, "Spiritual Unity" is a watershed album in free jazz/improvisation. Ayler and Co. hold nothing back, playing as if their very lives depended on it. The presence of only three musicians provide for ample amount of space, so while it's most definitely an intense recording, it isn't as suffocating as Coltrane's "Ascention". But don't let that fool you for a second. If you're not familiar with free or avant-garde-or whatever the hell you want to call it-jazz, you will loathe this with every last fiber of your being. But if you're a curious soul cutting your teeth on Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy and you're willing to take the plunge, go for it. You may never look back.


Also recommended:

Interstellar Space~John Coltrane
Repent~Charles Gayle