Spiritual Unity

Product Description
"From crusty garage rock to graceful classical, sculpted white noise to sultry Afro-Cuban grooviness, the New York native is a master of myriad musical forms and a slave to none…nowhere in Ribot’s discography is this more evident than on Spiritual Unity, an extraordinary tribute to the late free-jazz pioneer Albert Ayler." – SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY

Spiritual Unity,Marc Ribot,Pi Recordings,Avant-Garde,Avant-Garde Jazz,Free Jazz,Jazz,Pop,Structured Improvisation

Average customer rating: A correction to even further validate this recording Even an Olympic swimmer might not like the Ocean As The Spirit Moves Amazing Ignore the one star review by Blaster Death

Spiritual Unity Albert Ayler Manufacturer: Esp Disk Ltd. ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Jazz | Styles | Music Similar Items: Live In Greenwich Village: The Complete Impulse Recordings Out to Lunch For Alto Lenox Avenue Breakdown The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady ASIN: B0007Z9RAC Release Date: 2005-03-15

Tracks:

1. Ghosts: First Variation
2. The Wizard
3. Spirits
4. Ghosts: Second Variation

Customer Reviews:

A correction to even further validate this recording.......2007-01-30

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.

Even an Olympic swimmer might not like the Ocean.......2006-07-29

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.

As The Spirit Moves.......2006-07-22

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.

Amazing.......2006-05-13

This album changed the way I hear music. Absolutely amazing. Every time I listen I hear something new.

Ignore the one star review by Blaster Death.......2005-12-19

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.

Average customer rating: If you like African American Spirituals you will love this one.

United We Sing Manufacturer: Turtle Creek Chorale ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music General | Classical | Styles | Music ASIN: B00005YC0A Release Date: 1995-01-24

Tracks:

1. N'Kosi Sikelel I'africa
2. Amen Siakadumisa
3. Betelehemu
4. Something Inside So Strong
5. Over My Head
6. Soon-Ah-Will Be Done
7. Keep Your Lamps
8. This Little Light of Mine
9. Hush, Hush
10. Little Innocent Lamb
11. Ring Dem Bells
12. Witness
13. Elijah Rock
14. Deep River
15. Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho
16. Balm in Gilead
17. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
18. Rainbow Round My Shoulder
19. Hope for Tomorrow

Tracks:

1. Ride on King Jesus
2. Oh Mary, Don't You Weep
3. Psalm 133:1 Brethen in Unity
4. Holy Spirit
5. Available to You
6. I've Got Something This World Can't Take Away
7. Call Him Up
8. I'm a Testimony
9. Shadow of Your Wings
10. Make a Joyful Noise
11. Perfect Praise
12. Call Him Up (Reprise)

Customer Reviews:

If you like African American Spirituals you will love this one........2005-09-07

Large male chorus singing traditional African American spirituals with great harmony and arrangement.

Average customer rating: punk jazz Been there spitual unity Spirits Rejoice. Primal free jazz classics for a new century

Spiritual Unity Marc Ribot Manufacturer: Pi Recordings ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Jazz | Styles | Music Similar Items: Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos East/West Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall A Yo I Killed Your God Requiem for What's His Name ASIN: B0009298UW Release Date: 2005-05-03

Tracks:

1. Invocation
2. Spirits
3. Truth Is Marching In
4. Saints
5. Bells

Album Description

"From crusty garage rock to graceful classical, sculpted white noise to sultry Afro-Cuban grooviness, the New York native is a master of myriad musical forms and a slave to none…nowhere in Ribot's discography is this more evident than on Spiritual Unity, an extraordinary tribute to the late free-jazz pioneer Albert Ayler." - SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY

Customer Reviews:

punk jazz.......2006-04-08

I sort of edged into this sideways - as a 40 something ex-punk (wait, I'm still a punk, scratch that ex part) - and musician (guitar, drums) I've long been on the lookout for inspired noise. Earlier a reviewer notioned that Captain Beefheart can be heard in some of this work - and I agree wholeheartedly. It's just good solid fun giving up the usual pop-song form to enjoy the pure sounds of instruments that dance with each other - but perhaps also, dance apart from one another.

I don't care who is the world's greatest guitar player. No truely Punk rock inspired person ever will - because it has nothing to do with being able to create brilliant and inspiring music. If Johnny Ramone could write songs with two barr chord forms (and let's face it, he could have had his hand broken and set in either an A or E barr form, and the ramones would not have suffered much! In fact, ever see him play? His middle finger is UNDER the fret board for his A forms!) and still inspire a million people to pick up instruments and learn to play (instead of waiting around til they could do what Robert Frip does) He'd have to be called an inspiring guitarist, though obviously, technically his playing is more endurance based.
Ribot is sometimes said to be 3rd rate as a jazz musician, and I find the phrase meaningless and silly. After all, every time some guitar rag, full of advertising, lists the most influential guitarists of blah blah blah - the list is almost always the same group of tired classic rock and popular musicians that the kids vote for - there's very little new or interesting happening there. We've heard it!
Ribot is exciting, different, and very inspiring in his approach, tone, and even sleeve art and titles.
You must here Postizos off the Y los postizos cubanos album, to understand where I'm coming from. Lots of fun.

Been there.......2005-10-10

Yes, they are monsters when on stage. But beware, it could make a confusion - a friend of mine ran away from the club after 15 minutes of Ribot's & Ayler's controlled chaos. Wanderful, but not for everybodys ears. However, the recording is less disturbing, almost pleasant.

spitual unity.......2005-09-01

marc ribot is one of our most interesting guitars along with bill frisell. ribot has recognized albert ayler as the great jazz composer, improviser, and performer. ayler's compositions are the great dark ones of jazz. perhaps now ribot or frisell should tackle bix beiderbecke's work.

Spirits Rejoice........2005-07-06

Marc Ribot's Spiritual Unity is a band put together to explore the music of Albert Ayler, both from a compositional and theoretical standpoint-- this recording, four Ayler pieces and one original by Ribot, are performed with the same sort of frenzied collective improvisation style of Ayler's bands. What's remarkable is that for a band that was relatively recently formed, this quartet (Ribot on guitar, bassist on several early Ayler sessions Henry Grimes, trumpeter Roy Campbell and drummer Chad Taylor) sounds as though they've been doing this for years.

Themes are generally briefly stated, after which frantic collective improvisation begins-- at each point, there is a solo voice, but everyone gets involved in the improvisation. Perhaps most impressive is Grimes, making only his second recording since returning to the music scene, who performs with a self-assured confidence, particularly arco. The album is full of powerful moments (all over), but for me, the best moment is the theme statement of "Truth is Marching In"-- Campbell plays the melody, Ribot counters and harmonies it and Grimes freely associates in arco below. Eventually, Taylor joins in and adds flourishes and emphasis to the points being made. The band switches to a second theme (about four and a half minutes in) before soloing, and you can hear the pure joy in their playing.

All in all, this is a great piece-- you get the impression (particularly from the included live recording, "Bells") that this band would be a monster live and that this is only a snapshot of what their potential is. Recommended.

Primal free jazz classics for a new century.......2005-05-18

One of the original giants of 1960's free jazz, saxophonist Albert Ayler's simple folk melodies and catchy march themes are easily the most instantly recognizable yet curiously the least covered or emulated. Guitarist Marc Ribot's "Spiritual Unity" is an attempt to bring Ayler's music into the future by re-imagining these primal works with an electro-acoustic quartet.

From Tom Waits and Elvis Costello to the Lounge Lizards and John Zorn, Ribot is the consummate Downtown scenester. Following his muse from the early "fake-jazz" of his own Rootless Cosmopolitans to exploring Afro-Cuban rhythms with his Los Cubanos Postizos, Ribot has always had an ear for the primal. Shrek was Ribot's early attempt to translate the energetic qualities of Ayler's passionate acoustic free jazz sensibilities to an electric guitar ensemble. With "Spiritual Unity" Ribot has assembled a quartet that not only mirrors Ayler's own classic quartet line-ups, but even features an original member.

With Henry Grimes, Ayler's original bassist, "Spiritual Unity" has a link to the past that provides a solid conceptual as well as sonic foundation. Despite Grimes' decades long hiatus from performing, he sounds utterly confident here and holds down the bottom end as readily as he uses his arco playing to invoke Ayler's frequent use of violins and cellos in his later music. Drummer Chad Taylor's approach to the intrinsic freedom found in these tunes is one of freely modulated pulse and embodies as much textural coloration as blazing forward momentum. Trumpeter Roy Campbell, a long time admirer of the late Don Cherry (one of Ayler's many horn partners) holds up the front line with splintery abstract glee one moment, somber lyricism the next. It is Ribot's own angular electric guitar improvisations that propel the album into the future however. Utilizing an edgy overdriven sound to conjure Ayler's own primal tenor shreik, Ribot bridges the gap between free jazz saxophone skronk and rock guitar wail.

The tunes themselves are mere melodic skeletons, sketched out head melodies designed for intensive improvisation. Subtly updating the old man's original formula, Ribot has managed to transmit Ayler's timeless folk tunes into the next century. Unconcerned with tricky time changes and complex multipart themes utilized by so many other Downtown improvisers, this session is one of unfettered free blowing. The only non-studio track, the closer "Bells," recorded live at Tonic, is a perfect example of the quartet's methodology. Riding a simple melody from barely audible pointillism to burn out collective improvisation and back again, these four conjure everything from plaintive sing song cadences to frenzied electric melt down.

"Spiritual Unity" not only breathes life into classic post-war free jazz tunes, but provides an easy entrance for those unfamiliar with the folksy delirium of Albert Ayler's oeuvre.

Average customer rating: TRULY MAJESTIC This is good stuff

Majesty Aeoliah Manufacturer: Oreade Music ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | New Age | Styles | Music Meditation | New Age | Styles | Music General | New Age | Indie Music | Stores | Music Similar Items: Angel Love II: Sublime The Journey Home Realms of Grace: An Angelic Experience J'Adore Serene ASIN: B00004S80N Release Date: 2000-04-11

Tracks:

1. Reverance
2. Inner Mountain Flame
3. Sanctus Dominus
4. Majesty

Album Description

This highly inspired devotional and spiritual music was created for personal transformation, meditation, new age healing centres, and places of worship. The pieces on this recording evoke the majestic Presence and Reality of our higher Nature, inspiring us with reverance and Divine Love. As you hear this music, please visualize the entire planet earth bathing in these celestial healing sounds, as this will accelerate the healing and enlightenment of our planet Earth.

Customer Reviews:

TRULY MAJESTIC.......2003-07-21

At the suggestion of a friend I purchased this CD, thinking it would not live up to its glowing recommendation. It was actually much better than I had anticipated.

This is good stuff.......2000-08-15

Very very meditative, find myself crying sometimes when i listen to it. Give it a shot, you'll like it.

Average customer rating:

Unity The Spiritual Voices Featuring Keith "Wonderboy" Johnson Manufacturer: World Wide Gospel ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Christian & Gospel | Styles | Music Gospel | Christian & Gospel | Styles | Music Christian Contemporary Music | Christian & Gospel | Styles | Music Praise & Worship | Christian & Gospel | Styles | Music Similar Items: Just Being Me The Soul Seekers New Season Send a Revival Live and Alive ASIN: B00094AR6O Release Date: 2005-06-21

Tracks:

1. I Need A Blessin' - Keith Wonderboy Johnson
2. Time And Time Again - Keith Wonderboy Johnson
3. He Kept On Blessing Me - Keith Wonderboy Johnson
4. In Spite Of - Robert Holland
5. Too Good - Heze
6. He'll Make A Way - Nicko Harden
7. Trust Jesus - Stan Jones
8. Restore - Bo-Peep
9. My Soul Is Satisfied - Sean Scales
10. Gotta Right - Sean Scales
11. Brighter Days - The Brown Boyz
12. Wonderful - Keith Wonderboy Johnson
13. There's Not A Friend - The Spiritual Voices
14. I Got A Friend - The Spiritual Voices
15. Remember Me - The Spiritual Voices
16. Didn't Have To Bring Me Out - Bo-Peep
17. He Kept On Blessing Me (Ole Skool Mix - Alvin Green

Average customer rating:

Spiritual Unity Manufacturer: Esp ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Jazz | Styles | Music ASIN: B000068FS6 Release Date: 2005-03-15

Tracks:

1. Ghosts, First Variation
2. The Wizard
3. Spirits
4. Ghosts, Second Variation

Album Details

Ayler's Debut Release on the Esp Label Recorded July 10, 1964, it Remains a Historical Moment in Avant-garde Jazz

Average customer rating:

Daivi Shakti Graciella Zogbi Manufacturer: Vedic Devata Productions ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | International | Styles | Music ASIN: B000CA989C Release Date: 2005-03-22

Tracks:

1. Devi Mahatmiyam: Ya Devi
2. Maha Lakshmi Stotram: Namahstestu
3. Tatash Chavirabhut
4. Ya Kundendu
5. Jai Ma

Average customer rating:

Getting Better Every Minute Richard Mekdeci Manufacturer: Chrome Records ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music General | Pop | Styles | Music Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music General | Alternative Rock | Indie Music | Stores | Music General | Pop | Indie Music | Stores | Music ASIN: B00062WSU2 Release Date: 2004-04-04

Tracks:

1. God Is
2. Getting Better Every Minute
3. Only Love Can Do That
4. God Chant
5. All The Glory
6. Letting Go Of Holding On
7. Empowered
8. Goodbye Old Friend
9. Man At The Well
10. Children Of God
11. One Life To Live
12. The I Of The Storm
13. The Love Of God
14. There Is No God But God
15. Lords Psalm
16. Temptation

Album Description

Inspo-pop (Inspirational Pop). Non-denominational, world peace, unity, spiritual themes. Fully produced, radio ready. Mekdeci is an internationally known singer, songwriter and producer on a mission of world peace.

Average customer rating: Far ahead of its time Down To Spiritual Earth Absolutely wild music uncompromising expression Spiritual trio

Spiritual Unity Albert Ayler Manufacturer: Get Back Italy ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Jazz | Styles | Music Avant-Garde | Jazz | Indie Music | Stores | Music ASIN: B000027953 Release Date: 2000-01-11

Tracks:

1. Ghosts: First Variation
2. Wizard
3. Spirits
4. Ghosts: Second Variation

Amazon.com

This clocks in at only 29:31, but I guarantee you won't spend a more intense half-hour in your life. Basically an accomplished R&B and gospel tenor player (think of the sax break on James Brown's "Cold Sweat"), Albert Ayler began investigating the new freedom of the '60s with a monumentally expressive emotional range and an enormous blowtorched sound like the wailing babble of a thousand parishioners speaking in tongues. Hearing him try to play chord changes on some early Danish recordings is a stretch, but on this 1964 session, he perfected his basic improvisational approach and created a masterpiece. His most famous theme, "Ghosts," a sing-songy chant, is reprised twice here, proceeding from the folkish theme to airborne recitatives. Ayler achieves a heartbreaking tone on "Spirits" with a wide, almost operatic vibrato, while the collective eruptions on "The Wizard" suggest a Jackson Pollack painting come to life. Virtuoso bassist Gary Peacock provides quicksilver harmonic contrasts that are appropriately ambiguous, while maverick drummer Sunny Murray elicits a ghostly rise and fall of percussive textures--together they lend an almost impressionistic air to these impassioned freedom prayers. --Chip Stern

Album Description

Reissue of the legendary free jazz saxophonist's first albumfor the ESP label, originally released in 1964. Ayler was the first artist signed to the label & their first release was 'Spiritual Unity', which highlights his 1964-65 recordings with Gary Peacock & Sunny Murray. Four tracks. Each of the 1,000 numbered copies pressed up for this limited edition release comes in a miniaturized LP sleeve with the original cover art intact. 1998 Get Back Records release.

Customer Reviews:

Far ahead of its time.......2004-08-18

1. Ghosts (First Variation) 5:16
2. The Wizard 7:24
3. Spirits 6:50
4. Ghosts (Second Variation) 10:01

Albert Ayler, tenor sax
Gary Peacock, bass
Sunny Murray, drums


This is an incredible album. It's amazing in its abundance of pure, sacred sound energy, as are all of Ayler's recordings, especially with this group (Gary Peacock, bass, Sunny Murray, drums). This is stream-of-consciousness meditative music. If you are into that kind of thing, then look no further.

A point of interest is how early this recording is in relation to a lot of other free-jazz: July 1964. There was a huge underground free jazz thing happening at that time, but a lot of people weren't aware of it.

I think that this was Ayler's best group. Gary Peacock was very young at the time, I believe only 19 or 20. He was one of a handful of bass players who were using the "new" technique, which was to play with all four fingers instead of the usual one or two. This technique is probably most well-known by those familiar with Scott LaFaro, as he was one of the first to use it. However, most of the free-jazz bass players had studied it, too: Cecil McBee, Richard Davis, Art Davis, Henry Grimes, Peacock, and others.

Sunny Murray was a very significant figure at the time as well. He was the first "free" drummer; that is, the first drummer to play regardless of time constraints. Although all the other avant-garde drummers caught on to this very quickly, Murray was for sure the first. Other notable drummers who played in this style are Rashied Ali (probably the greatest), Beaver Harris, Andrew Cyrille, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Milford Graves, most of whom played with Ayler at some point.

Ayler's music changed a lot in 1965 and especially 1966. I love all the 1964 recordings because they are wild and free, while still possessing a certain casualness that makes you want to listen to them over and over again. It's sort of like he's saying "Yeah, I'm doing this! Why don't you get with it?" This is amazing stuff!

Down To Spiritual Earth.......2001-10-01

In ways sometimes difficult to appreciate, Albert Ayler had John Coltrane's number because, for all the commitment present in Coltrane's variant of free jazz (and all the fact that, technically speaking, Coltrane before going completely off his nut could play Ayler right under the table), Ayler was far the less self-conscious of the two. If you can imagine an obvious music experimenter who had no pretense about being one, who just kept a foot planted firmly on the earth (not for nothing did some critics make a point of finding the core of the blues in Ayler's signature work with greater readiness) and never let it get loose, at least in his earlier years, Albert Ayler was he. He was also probably the only one of his peers and elders who didn't give a damn who figured out he had a sense of humour in his playing, either, and for all that the free jazzers prattled about how their stuff was 200 percent melody, Ayler was one of the few players who actually sounded as though he lived it as gospel. That's a major part of what keeps "Spiritual Unity" one of the few pure free jazz albums from the height of that movement's thrust that actually sounds like anything but a brain-bending period piece.

Then again, when you've got a pair of partners as unrattlable as bassist Gary Peacock and drum colourist Sunny Murray, you'd damn well better keep a foot planted on the earth, because if you try going too far over the line between experimentation and nutsh@t for its own sake, about the only thing you're going to get for your trouble is nowhere fast. Not that Ayler was exactly accessible, but his refreshing lack of self-consciousness is precisely what put him several cuts beyond the 1960s jazz deconstructionists - and still keeps him there, pretty much. Practically his entire catalogue is worth hearing, but "Spiritual Unity," his jarring enough debut, sustains a kinetic surety level in its own league. He never exactly lacked for that, but neither did he ever again make it sound quite as though his existence depended entirely on it.

Absolutely wild music.......2001-06-04

Spiritual Unity is just under 30 minutes long. Thirty minutes of tremendous, emotional, delirious intensity. The theme of "Ghosts" is like a folk-song, immediately arresting in its naïve simplicity. Ayler uses the child-like motif of its theme as a vehicle to express both disintegration and liberation.

His anguished, restless quest for sonic sensations beyond the saxophone's conventional realm of sound is underpinned by the pointillistic plucking of Gary Peacock's phenomenally voluminous bass and Sunny Murray's ethereal percussive sprinkling cymbals.

An unmeasured response to this recording might lead one to judge it broken and dishevelled - but the depth of attention from Peacock and Murray to the nuances and subtle shifts in Ayler's delivery on "Spirits" reveals an intimacy that puts this trio right at the forefront of the free jazz movement, and the record a seminal one in the jazz of the 1960s.

uncompromising expression.......2001-03-07

This record is certainly not for everyone. It is for anyone who loves passionate, intense and completely free musical expression. Ayler, bass master Gary Peacock, and Sunny Murray sound here like they are on a voracious search. And the destination could be eons away, but the search is an awesome ride. An exhilarating and exhausting ride, that could leave "smooth jazzers" cringing with disgust, but so what? What do they know? Let yourself be taken away, let the power flow through your veins. This is completely uncompromising expression. This is not elevator music. It's real, you can feel the sweat, the blisters on the fingers of the musicians, the abandon with which they commit themselves. No compromise.

Spiritual trio.......2000-10-31

A lot of free-jazz recordings suffer from lack of listenability, usually because many of them are played by too large ensambles with individual players fighting for space rather than achieving a common goal. And though purists may disagree, listenability is every bit as relevant to the avant-garde as it is to pop. Period. I'm not opposed to noise (I love it), but noise needs context. And Aylers context is melodies. Noise + melodies = PUNK. This trio recording is a delight to listen to. Not that it's easy listening. But you can hear how much in tune with eachother these musicians were. Allthough Ayler carries the melodies, there is equal importance on Peacokcs booming bass, Murrays skitting drums and Aylers sax, hense creating a unity so rare in other ensambles. Aylers best known composition, Ghost, is so daring and beautiful and sets the tone for the rest of the record. Aylers melodies draw from old folk tunes, gospel and spirituals, but allthough the themes are religious, it does not mean YOU have to be to enjoy the spiritual feeling of this record. It jumps, it kicks, it weeps and it overcomes. Such beauty and how very, very punk.

Average customer rating:

Salvation III Kings Manufacturer: Commonreason ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music ASIN: B000CAF5OY Release Date: 2003-10-14

Tracks:

1. Intro
2. Shine
3. III Kings
4. Interlude
5. 1832
6. Interlude
7. Home
8. O.H.M.S
9. Interlude
10. Bump
11. Interlude
12. Sand Script
13. Salvation
14. Crumble Down
15. Something Serious
16. Musiq
17. Outro

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