Albert Ayler Trio – Spiritual Unity, ESP-Disk' Vinyl LP
Albert Ayler Trio – Spiritual Unity, ESP-Disk' Vinyl LP
Factory Sealed (New)
Albert Ayler was the 1960s African-American sax revolutionary whose vision for a new jazz sound expressed the rhythms and inflections of traditional street marches and spirituals through an uninhibitedly raw and searing tone that writer Amiri Baraka described as "something nature only sowed the seeds of, like the singing from a black hole". It's 50 years since the recording of Spiritual Unity Ayler's most famous album, with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, and this celebratory reissue adds the rare bonus track Vibrations. Half a century since the trio unleashed this music in a tiny Times Square studio, it still blazes, uplifts and unnerves. Ayler emerges from a Sonny Rollins-like jauntiness into slurred-pitch flurries and klaxon hoots over Peacock's prodding lines and Murray's shadings on the opening Ghosts; barges ferociously through seamless runs on The Wizard; and calls imploringly in a tone somewhere between an impassioned singer and a microtonal viola player on the meditative Spirits. It still sounds like music on the edge. John Fordham
