prophecy
Prophecy ESP 3030
Albert Ayler / tenor saxophone, Gary Peacock / bass, Sunny Murray / drums.
Recorded: June 14, 1964, Cellar Cafe, New York City, by Paul Haines.
Prophecy presents some of the most astonishing and revealing Ayler ever; astonishing and revealing because, though it is recorded only a month before Spiritual Unity, Ayler’s widely acknowledged masterpiece, it shows that LP to be virtually a consolidation of his work from this period, not even the farthest reaches of his expression! If Prophecy thus lacks something of the easy eloquence of Spiritual Unity, it is a more vital document, literally bursting with new ideas.
Nearly every aspect of Ayler’s work (and nearly every improvisational device) from whatever period can be heard: the romanticism, the humor, the tragedy, the intensity. Ayler is shown to be a master of illusion, his world a musical fun house in which the image is never what it appears to be, nor is it ever any other image. Nothing is universal, nothing the same.
Yet Ayler does not so much create illusions as he destroys them. His work is tumultuous, full of upheaval, dealing with life’s extremes. And that is why it was never easy listening. It is also a large part of the reason for its lasting musical relevance: namely, because the inner necessities of Ayler’s aesthetic - the constant reformulations, the widely expanded freedom from exact pitch and from the direct statement, the highly ambiguous accompaniment - not only implied the possibility of a spontaneously created, collectively improvised music, but also suggested a methodology for bringing such a music into being.
For a spontaneous, yet collective, music would seem to necessitate precisely the kind of rapidly changing, widely dynamic surface (with a tendency toward irresolution) which Ayler’s music opened up. Ayler’s work, of course (and his aesthetic purposes), have a great deal to do with thematic improvising as well, but the cataclysmic manner in which these ideas are pursued clearly suggests entirely new ways of creating music.
As for the specific tunes, the opening “Spirits” is pushed and pulled in every which way, while “Wizard” (actually “Children”) greatly expands the sense of that tune as it appeared on Vibrations (Arista). In the first “Ghosts”, Ayler engages in a near reckless dissolution of the theme, as if in pursuit of some illusory “essence;” and he ends the piece in characteristically uncharacteristic fashion, the tune trailing off in mid-phrase. There is also a motif that suggests the opening figure in Coltrane’s Meditations.
The second “Ghosts” (actually, the second “Spirits”) is taken at its fastest tempo ever, and Ayler almost immediately charges in, transposing it into flightier and considerably less certain realms; the ending is similar to the ending that would later be used for “Bells”. “Prophecy” is remindful of the nameless ballad heard on Bells, with Ayler wringing every last anguished note out of it. Everywhere, Murray and Peacock are outstanding, with both men working with a somewhat larger sound span than on Spiritual Unity.
The originality of Ayler’s ideas, his creation of a whole new instrumental (and musical) range to explore them and, what is more, their sheer audacity seem more and more incredible the more we penetrate his work. This new record presents his music at its most far reaching and most demanding.
Henry Kuntz, 1976
Posted:
Sunday, February 25th, 2007, 14:22.
Filed under: bells.
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