Albert Ayler

Holy Ghost is the first comprehensive attempt to build a monument in sound to Albert Ayler. The settings – radio and TV sessions, studio demos, private recordings, live concert footage – find his music at its most liberated. And with the sponsorship and assistance of Ayler's family, friends, and colleagues, Holy Ghost documents his never-before-heard first and last recordings, bookending rare and unissued music from every stage of his career.

revenantrecords.com

Love Cry & The Last Album is a 2011 2-in-1 compilation from Impulse! collecting two essential late-era studio recordings by legendary saxophonist and free jazz pioneer Albert Ayler. Recorded in 1967 and 1969 respectively, these albums showcase Ayler pushing the boundaries of modern music prior to his tragic death in 1970. Love Cry captures his iconic quintet—featuring Donald Ayler, Call Cobbs on harpsichord, Alan Silva, and Milford Graves—revisiting iconic themes like Ghosts, Bells, and Zion Hill with striking acoustic clarity. The Last Album highlights Ayler's radical final period, featuring bagpipes, vocal experiments with Mary Maria Parks, electric guitar by Canned Heat's Henry Vestine, and unexpected detours into blues and R&B. Together, they offer an uncompromised vision from one of jazz's true visionaries.

The first recording issued by the iconoclastic esp-disk’, and considered by many to be Ayler’s finest studio work, “Spiritual Unity” is a giant of free jazz. “In the 40 years since its release, spiritual unity has become a classic and ayler has become a legend. one of the most advanced music minds on the planet” – wire magazine, nov 2004.

The two tracks selected here, from the recording My Name Is Albert Ayler: “Summertime” by George Gershwin and Ayler’s original composition “C.T.,” most likely titled for Cecil Taylor, bridge Ayler’s past and point directly toward his future. Spiritual Unity is the fusion of music and pure emotion. It is as if Ayler, Peacock, and Murray were devising their own periodic table of elements by atomizing the components of sound, substituting chords for emotions and eschew- ing any concept of dimensional time. Ayler’s compositions, like those of Thelonious Monk, were to be covered many times in upcoming performances and recordings.

A key early album by Albert Ayler - a mindblowing record even all these many years later, and a key introduction of Ayler's music to the rest of the world! The set begins with a compelling spoken introduction from Albert - really taking the time to introduce himself and his new approach to jazz - then rolls into searing sounds on tenor and soprano sax, played with accompaniment from a European trio that has Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen on bass, Niels Bronsted on piano, and Ronnie Gardier on drums. A number of the tunes are standards - used by Ayler here in ways that are similar to some of Cecil Taylor's initial recordings - as a way of marking his own different in jazz, before setting out on his own compositions in years to come. Given the quartet setting, there's less of the locked horns and rhythms of some of Ayler's ESP recordings to come - but the difference in format also makes the album a real standout in his catalog, too.

Albert Ayler - New Grass (1968) {Impulse! 0602498842195 rel 2005}
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© 1968, 2005 Impulse! / Verve Music | 0602498842195
Jazz / Soul Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Saxophone

One of the last albums that Ayler ever recorded – and one of his most memorable! The record shows Ayler at the crossroads, filled with emotion and meaning, struggling to convey his message to a lager audience. At times, he takes a strange soul/jazz format to do so, and has tracks featuring backing by "the Soul Singers" – at others, he plays solo, with some of the most plaintive tones he ever laid down on wax! The record features an incredibly haunting "Message From Albert", plus the tracks "New Generation", "Sun Watcher", "New Ghosts", and "Free At Last". Completely fascinating, and a record that really makes you wonder what would have happened had he not died a mysterious early death!

Live in Greenwich Village was Albert Ayler's first recording for Impulse, and is arguably his finest moment, not only for the label, but ever. This double-CD reissue combines both of the Village concerts – documented only partially on previously released LPs – recorded in 1965 and 1966 with two very different groups. The Village gigs reveal the mature Ayler whose music embodied bold contradictions: There are the sweet, childlike, singalong melodies contrasted with violent screaming peals of emotion, contrasted with the gospel and R&B shouts of jubilation, all moving into and through one another.