My dog likes this music. He's calmly resting on the couch, eyes open in a meditative mood as I type this review. I'm not trying to be Kerouacian or anything. I'm just observing the effects of this music on a sentient being other than myself, concluding for the time being that Albert Ayler et. al. playing in 1964 has a pacifying effect. As for myself, the kind of musical experience the names of Albert Alyer and Don Cherry at first suggest fills me with dread, but the listening is ultimately liberating, and pacifying, due to the utter abandon of the primal cry the musicians work from.
This is not a case of crude ends justifying refined means, but of raw means being an expression of uplifting ends — the call to prayer of the human soul, an honoring of the pain and joy of life. Like most of what we call religious or spiritual experiences, this music played for an audience in Europe in 1964, also opens to listeners the spirits of those who came before and who are still with us. Most of the titles of the songs tell the story plainly: "Spirits," "Vibrations," "Saints," "Mothers," "Children," "Ghosts," "Holy Spirit," "Angels," "Infant Happiness." Some of the songs appear in three or four different versions, different dates and places, showing the agility of the musicians and their music's adaptable existence as soulful cry.
All the aforementioned is evoked in this release's compilation of four different concerts recorded in Denmark and Holland in the autumn of 1964. The musicians are Albert Ayler on tenor saxophone, Don Cherry on cornet, Gary Peacock on bass, Sunny Murray on drums, all stylists of the highest order, but also human beings with a substantial musical message to convey. To put it into words is not easy, but it is something deep and meaningful which even my dog gets.
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