Search - Albert Ayler :: Spirital Unity

Far ahead of its time

Matt Stephens | USA | 08/17/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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

BluesDuke | Las Vegas, Nevada | 10/01/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."