Albert Ayler Music

Spiritual Unity is just under 30 minutes long. Thirty minutes of tremendous, emotional, delirious intensity. The theme of "Ghosts" is like a folk-song, immediately arresting in its naïve simplicity. Ayler uses the child-like motif of its theme as a vehicle to express both disintegration and liberation.

His anguished, restless quest for sonic sensations beyond the saxophone's conventional realm of sound is underpinned by the pointillistic plucking of Gary Peacock's phenomenally voluminous bass and Sunny Murray's ethereal percussive sprinkling cymbals.

An unmeasured response to this recording might lead one to judge it broken and dishevelled - but the depth of attention from Peacock and Murray to the nuances and subtle shifts in Ayler's delivery on "Spirits" reveals an intimacy that puts this trio right at the forefront of the free jazz movement, and the record a seminal one in the jazz of the 1960s.

Spiritual Unity is just under 30 minutes long. Thirty minutes of tremendous, emotional, delirious intensity. The theme of "Ghosts" is like a folk-song, immediately arresting in its naïve simplicity. Ayler uses the child-like motif of its theme as a vehicle to express both disintegration and liberation.

His anguished, restless quest for sonic sensations beyond the saxophone's conventional realm of sound is underpinned by the pointillistic plucking of Gary Peacock's phenomenally voluminous bass and Sunny Murray's ethereal percussive sprinkling cymbals.

An unmeasured response to this recording might lead one to judge it broken and dishevelled - but the depth of attention from Peacock and Murray to the nuances and subtle shifts in Ayler's delivery on "Spirits" reveals an intimacy that puts this trio right at the forefront of the free jazz movement, and the record a seminal one in the jazz of the 1960s.

It's funny how the "art" community will latch on to stuff like this as if it has some deep meaning. It's noise made by good musicians. What feeling does it capture? I can listen to the most evil sounding blackened death metal or Bach and classical music. Rock & Roll, pop, cool jazz, reggae, country, ragtime and everything in between, but what is the point of this music? At least all of those types of music have a point and capture a certain essence. What does this capture? Spiritual Unity? Yeah right, how does music that most people hate have any unifying qualities. If anything it is divisive. Dividing people into those who like good music and those who think bad music is good music. The "art" type people will always get behind anything. Someone could make a painting by smearing feces onto a canvas and die hard art people will say this the greatest piece of art of all time. I've heard worse though so I give it 2 stars.

No joke - this is the single greatest piece of art I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. When I first listened to this album, I had had some previous exposure to Ayler's playing, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. But nothing could have prepared me for those first few otherworldy sounds to escape his horn, which gradually transform into the main melody for the classic composition "Ghosts." When I heard that, I stopped what I was doing and my jaw DROPPED to the floor. "This is it," I thought. "I've FOUND it!"

There are a LOT of ways to listen to this album. Most people who hear it interpret is as a release of aggression and pain, but that really wasn't Alyer's intention. He was simply doing the only thing he COULD do, which was to play directly from his heart and soul without any concern for others' expectations. His playing was HIM. Many musicians have learned from his approach and have accomplished great things, but to this day Ayler's playing remains the strongest and the best.

As for the other two players on this album, drummer Sonny Murray and bassist Gary Peacock, I have only positive things to say as well. The sound that this trio attained stands as one of the greatest achievements in music. I'm not going to even attempt to elaborate on this - just LISTEN (!!!) and you will hear what I mean.

One last thought to close out this review: This is the closest thing to pure love that I have ever experienced through sound alone.

But words are meaningless when it comes to music, so I'll cut the jibber-jabber and let's just LISTEN, shall we?

Albert unquestionably took jazz to its 'logical' conclusion with his caustic fire-breathing, not for the faint of heart. This disk shows him in all his split-tone howling speaking-in-tongues refinement, with powerful backing by Sunny Murray's light-as-knitting-needles-playing and Gary Peacock's inventive bass antics. Rarely if ever in jazz will you hear a trio speak to one another so intricately; Ayler recorded many fine sides, but this surely stands among his best. Three songs are fast, one slow, though it goes into the same turgid territory of the others. But familiar with his entire catalog, you get the sense that Albert's having a heck of a lot of fun here with his odd micro-melodies, frantic peals and squeals of notes (that yes, were a huge influence on Coltrane, who was quoted as saying that Ayler got beyond what he was capable of playing). Music for that rainy day? If it's raining fire and the four horsemen are prancing on the rooftop - a great album with no apologies. (For those of you who love Ayler, be sure to check out Charles Gayle's early work. I saw him live, first row, and with his first gutteral tenor blast he pinned me to the seat and kept me there, "bringing it home" from first blast to final scream - yow!)

...to awaken the savage beast. Or to make the somnolent beast savage once more. After the cool/hot intellectuality of be-bop, the classical musician's inevitable favorite jazz repertoire, where could jazz have gone but to Albert Ayler?

One previous reviewer declared that Ayler paid no attention to the past of jazz or of music at large. It couldn't be farther from the truth. Ayler went straight back to the lower Mississippi, the muddy bottom, the House of the Rising Sun, to reconnect jazz to its raw origins, to the sound of a slave band funeral procession, half wailing in grief, half rollicking in anticipation of a long night's drunk.

Ayler's tone on his sax is blatantly crude. He means it to be so. He has no stomach for prettiness. Just listen to the few seconds of the amazon samples. You'll get the idea. You'll instantly hate it like George W's simian grin, or you'll gasp, as I did the first time I heard Ayler, and shout out "This is what jazz almost forgot about!"

The reviewer "El Lagarto" may want to note that the release date of John Coltrane's "Ascension," his first proper free jazz album and first major foray into the avant-garde, is June 28, 1965. "Spiritual Unity" precedes that album by approximately a year, and if I am not mistaken, Coltrane cited Ayler as an influence which helped vault him into his late period recordings.

This recording is a masterpiece and must have been a revelation at the time to all with open ears. For an even more complete and brilliant document of Ayler's influential sound and immense presence, check out the Complete Greenwich Village recordings on Impulse! That is all for now.

In ways sometimes difficult to appreciate, Albert Ayler had John Coltrane's number because, for all the commitment present in Coltrane's variant of free jazz (and all the fact that, technically speaking, Coltrane before going completely off his nut could play Ayler right under the table), Ayler was far the less self-conscious of the two. If you can imagine an obvious music experimenter who had no pretense about being one, who just kept a foot planted firmly on the earth (not for nothing did some critics make a point of finding the core of the blues in Ayler's signature work with greater readiness) and never let it get loose, at least in his earlier years, Albert Ayler was he. He was also probably the only one of his peers and elders who didn't give a damn who figured out he had a sense of humour in his playing, either, and for all that the free jazzers prattled about how their stuff was 200 percent melody, Ayler was one of the few players who actually sounded as though he lived it as gospel. That's a major part of what keeps "Spiritual Unity" one of the few pure free jazz albums from the height of that movement's thrust that actually sounds like anything but a brain-bending period piece.

Then again, when you've got a pair of partners as unrattlable as bassist Gary Peacock and drum colourist Sunny Murray, you'd damn well better keep a foot planted on the earth, because if you try going too far over the line between experimentation and nutsh@t for its own sake, about the only thing you're going to get for your trouble is nowhere fast. Not that Ayler was exactly accessible, but his refreshing lack of self-consciousness is precisely what put him several cuts beyond the 1960s jazz deconstructionists - and still keeps him there, pretty much. Practically his entire catalogue is worth hearing, but "Spiritual Unity," his jarring enough debut, sustains a kinetic surety level in its own league. He never exactly lacked for that, but neither did he ever again make it sound quite as though his existence depended entirely on it.

1. Ghosts (First Variation) 5:16
2. The Wizard 7:24
3. Spirits 6:50
4. Ghosts (Second Variation) 10:01

Albert Ayler, tenor sax
Gary Peacock, bass
Sunny Murray, drums


This is an incredible album. It's amazing in its abundance of pure, sacred sound energy, as are all of Ayler's recordings, especially with this group (Gary Peacock, bass, Sunny Murray, drums). This is stream-of-consciousness meditative music. If you are into that kind of thing, then look no further.

A point of interest is how early this recording is in relation to a lot of other free-jazz: July 1964. There was a huge underground free jazz thing happening at that time, but a lot of people weren't aware of it.

I think that this was Ayler's best group. Gary Peacock was very young at the time, I believe only 19 or 20. He was one of a handful of bass players who were using the "new" technique, which was to play with all four fingers instead of the usual one or two. This technique is probably most well-known by those familiar with Scott LaFaro, as he was one of the first to use it. However, most of the free-jazz bass players had studied it, too: Cecil McBee, Richard Davis, Art Davis, Henry Grimes, Peacock, and others.

Sunny Murray was a very significant figure at the time as well. He was the first "free" drummer; that is, the first drummer to play regardless of time constraints. Although all the other avant-garde drummers caught on to this very quickly, Murray was for sure the first. Other notable drummers who played in this style are Rashied Ali (probably the greatest), Beaver Harris, Andrew Cyrille, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Milford Graves, most of whom played with Ayler at some point.

Ayler's music changed a lot in 1965 and especially 1966. I love all the 1964 recordings because they are wild and free, while still possessing a certain casualness that makes you want to listen to them over and over again. It's sort of like he's saying "Yeah, I'm doing this! Why don't you get with it?" This is amazing stuff!

Spiritual Unity is just under 30 minutes long. Thirty minutes of tremendous, emotional, delirious intensity. The theme of "Ghosts" is like a folk-song, immediately arresting in its naïve simplicity. Ayler uses the child-like motif of its theme as a vehicle to express both disintegration and liberation.

His anguished, restless quest for sonic sensations beyond the saxophone's conventional realm of sound is underpinned by the pointillistic plucking of Gary Peacock's phenomenally voluminous bass and Sunny Murray's ethereal percussive sprinkling cymbals.

An unmeasured response to this recording might lead one to judge it broken and dishevelled - but the depth of attention from Peacock and Murray to the nuances and subtle shifts in Ayler's delivery on "Spirits" reveals an intimacy that puts this trio right at the forefront of the free jazz movement, and the record a seminal one in the jazz of the 1960s.

A lot of free-jazz recordings suffer from lack of listenability, usually because many of them are played by too large ensambles with individual players fighting for space rather than achieving a common goal. And though purists may disagree, listenability is every bit as relevant to the avant-garde as it is to pop. Period. I'm not opposed to noise (I love it), but noise needs context. And Aylers context is melodies. Noise + melodies = PUNK. This trio recording is a delight to listen to. Not that it's easy listening. But you can hear how much in tune with eachother these musicians were. Allthough Ayler carries the melodies, there is equal importance on Peacokcs booming bass, Murrays skitting drums and Aylers sax, hense creating a unity so rare in other ensambles. Aylers best known composition, Ghost, is so daring and beautiful and sets the tone for the rest of the record. Aylers melodies draw from old folk tunes, gospel and spirituals, but allthough the themes are religious, it does not mean YOU have to be to enjoy the spiritual feeling of this record. It jumps, it kicks, it weeps and it overcomes. Such beauty and how very, very punk.

This record is certainly not for everyone. It is for anyone who loves passionate, intense and completely free musical expression. Ayler, bass master Gary Peacock, and Sunny Murray sound here like they are on a voracious search. And the destination could be eons away, but the search is an awesome ride. An exhilarating and exhausting ride, that could leave "smooth jazzers" cringing with disgust, but so what? What do they know? Let yourself be taken away, let the power flow through your veins. This is completely uncompromising expression. This is not elevator music. It's real, you can feel the sweat, the blisters on the fingers of the musicians, the abandon with which they commit themselves. No compromise.

In ways sometimes difficult to appreciate, Albert Ayler had John Coltrane's number because, for all the commitment present in Coltrane's variant of free jazz (and all the fact that, technically speaking, Coltrane before going completely off his nut could play Ayler right under the table), Ayler was far the less self-conscious of the two. If you can imagine an obvious music experimenter who had no pretense about being one, who just kept a foot planted firmly on the earth (not for nothing did some critics make a point of finding the core of the blues in Ayler's signature work with greater readiness) and never let it get loose, at least in his earlier years, Albert Ayler was he. He was also probably the only one of his peers and elders who didn't give a damn who figured out he had a sense of humour in his playing, either, and for all that the free jazzers prattled about how their stuff was 200 percent melody, Ayler was one of the few players who actually sounded as though he lived it as gospel. That's a major part of what keeps "Spiritual Unity" one of the few pure free jazz albums from the height of that movement's thrust that actually sounds like anything but a brain-bending period piece.

Then again, when you've got a pair of partners as unrattlable as bassist Gary Peacock and drum colourist Sunny Murray, you'd damn well better keep a foot planted on the earth, because if you try going too far over the line between experimentation and nutsh@t for its own sake, about the only thing you're going to get for your trouble is nowhere fast. Not that Ayler was exactly accessible, but his refreshing lack of self-consciousness is precisely what put him several cuts beyond the 1960s jazz deconstructionists - and still keeps him there, pretty much. Practically his entire catalogue is worth hearing, but "Spiritual Unity," his jarring enough debut, sustains a kinetic surety level in its own league. He never exactly lacked for that, but neither did he ever again make it sound quite as though his existence depended entirely on it.

1. Ghosts (First Variation) 5:16
2. The Wizard 7:24
3. Spirits 6:50
4. Ghosts (Second Variation) 10:01

Albert Ayler, tenor sax
Gary Peacock, bass
Sunny Murray, drums


This is an incredible album. It's amazing in its abundance of pure, sacred sound energy, as are all of Ayler's recordings, especially with this group (Gary Peacock, bass, Sunny Murray, drums). This is stream-of-consciousness meditative music. If you are into that kind of thing, then look no further.

A point of interest is how early this recording is in relation to a lot of other free-jazz: July 1964. There was a huge underground free jazz thing happening at that time, but a lot of people weren't aware of it.

I think that this was Ayler's best group. Gary Peacock was very young at the time, I believe only 19 or 20. He was one of a handful of bass players who were using the "new" technique, which was to play with all four fingers instead of the usual one or two. This technique is probably most well-known by those familiar with Scott LaFaro, as he was one of the first to use it. However, most of the free-jazz bass players had studied it, too: Cecil McBee, Richard Davis, Art Davis, Henry Grimes, Peacock, and others.

Sunny Murray was a very significant figure at the time as well. He was the first "free" drummer; that is, the first drummer to play regardless of time constraints. Although all the other avant-garde drummers caught on to this very quickly, Murray was for sure the first. Other notable drummers who played in this style are Rashied Ali (probably the greatest), Beaver Harris, Andrew Cyrille, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Milford Graves, most of whom played with Ayler at some point.

Ayler's music changed a lot in 1965 and especially 1966. I love all the 1964 recordings because they are wild and free, while still possessing a certain casualness that makes you want to listen to them over and over again. It's sort of like he's saying "Yeah, I'm doing this! Why don't you get with it?" This is amazing stuff!

Spiritual Unity is just under 30 minutes long. Thirty minutes of tremendous, emotional, delirious intensity. The theme of "Ghosts" is like a folk-song, immediately arresting in its naïve simplicity. Ayler uses the child-like motif of its theme as a vehicle to express both disintegration and liberation.

His anguished, restless quest for sonic sensations beyond the saxophone's conventional realm of sound is underpinned by the pointillistic plucking of Gary Peacock's phenomenally voluminous bass and Sunny Murray's ethereal percussive sprinkling cymbals.

An unmeasured response to this recording might lead one to judge it broken and dishevelled - but the depth of attention from Peacock and Murray to the nuances and subtle shifts in Ayler's delivery on "Spirits" reveals an intimacy that puts this trio right at the forefront of the free jazz movement, and the record a seminal one in the jazz of the 1960s.

A lot of free-jazz recordings suffer from lack of listenability, usually because many of them are played by too large ensambles with individual players fighting for space rather than achieving a common goal. And though purists may disagree, listenability is every bit as relevant to the avant-garde as it is to pop. Period. I'm not opposed to noise (I love it), but noise needs context. And Aylers context is melodies. Noise + melodies = PUNK. This trio recording is a delight to listen to. Not that it's easy listening. But you can hear how much in tune with eachother these musicians were. Allthough Ayler carries the melodies, there is equal importance on Peacokcs booming bass, Murrays skitting drums and Aylers sax, hense creating a unity so rare in other ensambles. Aylers best known composition, Ghost, is so daring and beautiful and sets the tone for the rest of the record. Aylers melodies draw from old folk tunes, gospel and spirituals, but allthough the themes are religious, it does not mean YOU have to be to enjoy the spiritual feeling of this record. It jumps, it kicks, it weeps and it overcomes. Such beauty and how very, very punk.

This record is certainly not for everyone. It is for anyone who loves passionate, intense and completely free musical expression. Ayler, bass master Gary Peacock, and Sunny Murray sound here like they are on a voracious search. And the destination could be eons away, but the search is an awesome ride. An exhilarating and exhausting ride, that could leave "smooth jazzers" cringing with disgust, but so what? What do they know? Let yourself be taken away, let the power flow through your veins. This is completely uncompromising expression. This is not elevator music. It's real, you can feel the sweat, the blisters on the fingers of the musicians, the abandon with which they commit themselves. No compromise.

In ways sometimes difficult to appreciate, Albert Ayler had John Coltrane's number because, for all the commitment present in Coltrane's variant of free jazz (and all the fact that, technically speaking, Coltrane before going completely off his nut could play Ayler right under the table), Ayler was far the less self-conscious of the two. If you can imagine an obvious music experimenter who had no pretense about being one, who just kept a foot planted firmly on the earth (not for nothing did some critics make a point of finding the core of the blues in Ayler's signature work with greater readiness) and never let it get loose, at least in his earlier years, Albert Ayler was he. He was also probably the only one of his peers and elders who didn't give a damn who figured out he had a sense of humour in his playing, either, and for all that the free jazzers prattled about how their stuff was 200 percent melody, Ayler was one of the few players who actually sounded as though he lived it as gospel. That's a major part of what keeps "Spiritual Unity" one of the few pure free jazz albums from the height of that movement's thrust that actually sounds like anything but a brain-bending period piece.

Then again, when you've got a pair of partners as unrattlable as bassist Gary Peacock and drum colourist Sunny Murray, you'd damn well better keep a foot planted on the earth, because if you try going too far over the line between experimentation and nutsh@t for its own sake, about the only thing you're going to get for your trouble is nowhere fast. Not that Ayler was exactly accessible, but his refreshing lack of self-consciousness is precisely what put him several cuts beyond the 1960s jazz deconstructionists - and still keeps him there, pretty much. Practically his entire catalogue is worth hearing, but "Spiritual Unity," his jarring enough debut, sustains a kinetic surety level in its own league. He never exactly lacked for that, but neither did he ever again make it sound quite as though his existence depended entirely on it.

1. Ghosts (First Variation) 5:16
2. The Wizard 7:24
3. Spirits 6:50
4. Ghosts (Second Variation) 10:01

Albert Ayler, tenor sax
Gary Peacock, bass
Sunny Murray, drums


This is an incredible album. It's amazing in its abundance of pure, sacred sound energy, as are all of Ayler's recordings, especially with this group (Gary Peacock, bass, Sunny Murray, drums). This is stream-of-consciousness meditative music. If you are into that kind of thing, then look no further.

A point of interest is how early this recording is in relation to a lot of other free-jazz: July 1964. There was a huge underground free jazz thing happening at that time, but a lot of people weren't aware of it.

I think that this was Ayler's best group. Gary Peacock was very young at the time, I believe only 19 or 20. He was one of a handful of bass players who were using the "new" technique, which was to play with all four fingers instead of the usual one or two. This technique is probably most well-known by those familiar with Scott LaFaro, as he was one of the first to use it. However, most of the free-jazz bass players had studied it, too: Cecil McBee, Richard Davis, Art Davis, Henry Grimes, Peacock, and others.

Sunny Murray was a very significant figure at the time as well. He was the first "free" drummer; that is, the first drummer to play regardless of time constraints. Although all the other avant-garde drummers caught on to this very quickly, Murray was for sure the first. Other notable drummers who played in this style are Rashied Ali (probably the greatest), Beaver Harris, Andrew Cyrille, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Milford Graves, most of whom played with Ayler at some point.

Ayler's music changed a lot in 1965 and especially 1966. I love all the 1964 recordings because they are wild and free, while still possessing a certain casualness that makes you want to listen to them over and over again. It's sort of like he's saying "Yeah, I'm doing this! Why don't you get with it?" This is amazing stuff!

Spiritual Unity is just under 30 minutes long. Thirty minutes of tremendous, emotional, delirious intensity. The theme of "Ghosts" is like a folk-song, immediately arresting in its naïve simplicity. Ayler uses the child-like motif of its theme as a vehicle to express both disintegration and liberation.

His anguished, restless quest for sonic sensations beyond the saxophone's conventional realm of sound is underpinned by the pointillistic plucking of Gary Peacock's phenomenally voluminous bass and Sunny Murray's ethereal percussive sprinkling cymbals.

An unmeasured response to this recording might lead one to judge it broken and dishevelled - but the depth of attention from Peacock and Murray to the nuances and subtle shifts in Ayler's delivery on "Spirits" reveals an intimacy that puts this trio right at the forefront of the free jazz movement, and the record a seminal one in the jazz of the 1960s.

A lot of free-jazz recordings suffer from lack of listenability, usually because many of them are played by too large ensambles with individual players fighting for space rather than achieving a common goal. And though purists may disagree, listenability is every bit as relevant to the avant-garde as it is to pop. Period. I'm not opposed to noise (I love it), but noise needs context. And Aylers context is melodies. Noise + melodies = PUNK. This trio recording is a delight to listen to. Not that it's easy listening. But you can hear how much in tune with eachother these musicians were. Allthough Ayler carries the melodies, there is equal importance on Peacokcs booming bass, Murrays skitting drums and Aylers sax, hense creating a unity so rare in other ensambles. Aylers best known composition, Ghost, is so daring and beautiful and sets the tone for the rest of the record. Aylers melodies draw from old folk tunes, gospel and spirituals, but allthough the themes are religious, it does not mean YOU have to be to enjoy the spiritual feeling of this record. It jumps, it kicks, it weeps and it overcomes. Such beauty and how very, very punk.

This record is certainly not for everyone. It is for anyone who loves passionate, intense and completely free musical expression. Ayler, bass master Gary Peacock, and Sunny Murray sound here like they are on a voracious search. And the destination could be eons away, but the search is an awesome ride. An exhilarating and exhausting ride, that could leave "smooth jazzers" cringing with disgust, but so what? What do they know? Let yourself be taken away, let the power flow through your veins. This is completely uncompromising expression. This is not elevator music. It's real, you can feel the sweat, the blisters on the fingers of the musicians, the abandon with which they commit themselves. No compromise.