From 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 Details
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.
