Track Listing

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23190 in Music
• Released on: 2005-03-15
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Pressed on 180-gram virgin vinyl. Includes digital download card. Original artwork restored. Hand-numbered limited edition of 1,000 copies. Originally recorded July 10, 1964, in the tiny Variety Arts Recording Studio.

All About Jazz
"If you haven't heard this record, you've missed out on one of the most profound artistic statements of the 20th century."

Customer Reviews

Ayler's idiom comes together for the first time.
Tenor saxaphonist Albert Ayler recorded many powerful albums in his time, "Spiritual Unity" is probably his first truly great record. Featuring a trio of Gary Peacock (bass) and Sunny Murry (drums), this is a band with a tight rapport who is able to really get inside the music. Murray, one of the true free jazz master drummers, manages to suggest time while not constraining himself to it, and Peacock liberates himself altogether from traditional bass roles-- he plays in a free associative pattern behind behind Ayler. What is most important about this trio is that this is the first time Ayler's band seems to actually "get" what he's doing and he can project with full confidence because he's not being held back by the band.

The best evidence of this is probably Ayler's solo in "The Wizard"-- he cuts loose completely, bringing forth every groan and scream he can coax from his sax before yielding to a brief bass solo. Of the rest, "Spirits" gets a stunning reading, with Ayler's wide vibrato injecting a high level of emotive content into the music and Peacock's sympathetic arco/pizzicato accompaniment really holding firm. Of the two takes of "Ghosts" on the album, the former is much more relaxed, with Ayler's unaccompanied intro and relatively restrained soloing, the latter is extremely aggressive, filled with the idiom of Ayler's music, twisgting and turning and really getting in and around the piece.

This reissue, on the resurrected ESP Disk label, is essential. Remastered from the original tapes removed from a vault for the first time, it sounds fantastic-- the muted drum sound seems to have been somewhat repaired, and more of the subtleties of Murray's playing can be heard, in fact the entire record is crisp, clean and sounds superior to even the fantastic remastering on Ayler's Impulse recordings.

Like all of Ayler's catalog, "Spiritual Unity" is a difficult album, but its aprobably a good place to start-- it shows an artist at the height of his powers. Get this release not the others, its well worth the investment. Recommended.

As The Spirit Moves
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.

Even an Olympic swimmer might not like the Ocean
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.