interstellar space
Interstellar Space
Impulse ASD-9277
John Coltrane / tenor saxophone,bells , Rashied Ali / drums.
Track listing: Mars | Venus | Jupiter | Saturn | Leo | Jupiter Variation |
Recorded: February 22, 1967. Original recordings produced by John Coltrane.
Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder.
Space presents Coltrane with most of the usual trappings stripped away. Only Trane himself and Rashied Ali are on hand for these proceedings, and together they create a series of remarkably unified performances, uncommonly sharp yet refined in their intensity. Ali, for his part, has not been heard to greater advantage on record, while Coltrane’s work is like a summation or perhaps a consolidation of all that has come before. The rhythmic agitation and harmony density which in his most challenging music (the period with Pharoah Sanders) built toward the cathartic scream is combined and fused with the swing and lyric grace of his work with the quartet (e.g., A Love Supreme). What unfolds is an “energy” lyricism, or a coiled tension which is similarly developmental (in a thematic sense).The combination of elements makes this one of the most stunning examples of Coltrane’s saxophone virtuosity ever presented.
“Mars” is red-hot, theme and improvisation inseparable. Trane’s statement is virtually overwhelming, as phrases of striking rhythmic contrast are laid on top of transmuted “sheets of sound”: clean, quick strings of notes joined together by a technique that is simply monstrous. “Venus” is perfection: a beautifully concise piece with nothing extraneous, an improvisational masterpiece marred only by some just-flawed intonations. “Jupiter” is nearly as good and even more exploratory, but seems not as loose in parts. “Saturn” suffers at the beginning from a bare discontinuity between Ali’s introduction and the opening of Trane’s thematic statement, but from there the piece flows with ease and is as good as anything here. Space, moreover, will be a revelation to many while perhaps proving too strong, in its purity, for others. But it is one of the most profound recordings John Coltrane ever made.
Henry Kuntz, 1975
Posted:
Thursday, March 1st, 2007, 13:52.
Filed under: bells.
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