Search - Albert Ayler :: Spiritual Unity

Spiritual Unity
Albert Ayler
Spiritual Unity
Genre: Jazz
 
  •  Track Listings (4) - Disc #1

1964 album pressed on 140 gram clear red vinyl. Get Back. 2004

     
?

Larger Image

CD Details

All Artists: Albert Ayler
Title: Spiritual Unity
Members Wishing: 4
Total Copies: 0
Label: Esp-Disk/City Hall
Release Date: 10/5/2004
Genre: Jazz
Style: Avant Garde & Free Jazz
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 646315910223

Synopsis

Album Description
1964 album pressed on 140 gram clear red vinyl. Get Back. 2004
 

CD Reviews

Uncompromising expression
MusicFreak | FL | 03/07/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)

"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
Morten Christopher Monsen | Oslo Norway | 10/31/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."
Absolutely wild music
Ricard Giner (cootie@cootiesjazz.co | Brighton, UK | 06/04/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."