Schlagwort-Archive: John Coltrane

Latest Batch of Album Reviews (June 2022) and more: Leonard Cohen, Brian Eno, John Cale, John Coltrane, Blind Willie Johnson, and more

Still tying up loose ends of the CD-shelf, so there are box set, side projects and the dodgiest kind of compilations: newbie baiting.

We start with the Leonard Cohen-box set The Complete Studio Albums Collection (2011). This came at a neat price, but has a wiff of deceit and squalidness coming from the business end of things… still, got this when it was still reasonably cheap and it’s neat. Read more for details.

Next up are John Cale and Brian Eno with their one-off duo effort Wrong Way Up (1990) – synth-pop I don’t like or understand from two artists I do love and understand. Well.

For something completely different, let’s take a look at the Impulse!-CD-edition of an epochal classic: John Coltrane’s 1965-free jazz sermon Ascension. Now this is a must.

We close with another weird blues compilation from the early 2000s, so when the CD as a format started to decline while good old music was legally available for reissues: King of Guitar Evangelists (2004) by acoustic Texas blues majesty Blind Willie Johnson. This compilation has its heart in the right place and was curated by Gérard Herzhaft who is without overstatement a legend, literally the author of the Encyclopedia of the Blues. But this compilation had no other function than to avert a new audience with its budget price – le’ts hope it did!

That’s it for the album reviews. I also wrote a little something about the old master of piano blues, Roosevelt Sykes. So have fun.

John Coltrane: Ascension

Rating: 8.8/10
Rated as: Album
Album Status: Genre Classic
Released: 1966
Recorded: 1965
Specific Genre: Free Jazz, Spiritual Jazz
Main Genre: Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz
Undertones: Experimental Big Band
Label: Impulse!

1 Ascension (Edition II)
Bonus Tracks: 2 Ascension (Edition I)

Like a seagull thrown around by the tides

This is Coltrane’s „free jazz“-album which might alienate people who mainly go for his 1950s hard bop and ballads. Up to this point, Coltrane already had been flirting and entangled with avant-garde here and there, but this is the wedding announcement. If you listen to free jazz at all, I’d say this is the second record you should pick up (you can figure out the first for yourself). And, to exactly no one’s surprise, it’s great. The energy is amazing, makes you feel like a seagull thrown around by the tides, waves and winds, and I regularly find myself having gone through these 40 minutes without really noticing in the best way – this record sort of suspends my sense of time.

While free jazz shouldn’t make you „tune out“ mentally, you really don’t have a lot of listening „work“ to do here: The sheer, frenzied soul displayed by the very unusual set-up just carries you right through the piece. The performance of the (large) collective is so good it makes your brain forget that this is, at least supposedly, „cerebral“ music. It is also a very different approach compared to Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz: While that album was more of a thoroughly collective effort, Ascension follows a pretty tight structure that has ensemble and soloists alternating every few minutes in a specific order (everyone involved gets one solo, except Garrison and Davis on the double-basses get a duet). That’s not better or worse than Coleman’s stress on collective dynamics of development, but it does give you slightly more to hold on to structurally when you’re starting out in the genre. As the record that announced Coltrane‘s complete take-off into the stratosphere, it’s pretty bold and astounding in terms of full realisation – no „transitional“ aspects here.