This album is from Coltrane's late period when he was delving more and more into free jazz. Recorded after the big group improvisation Ascension and before the duet Interstellar Space with Rashied Ali on drums. Rashied Ali who is on the left channel with Coltrane here, Elvin Jones, the drummer from the classic quartet is on the right one together with Pharoah Sanders tenor sax. McCoy Tyner on piano and Jimmy Garrison on bass are the other two quartet members who complete the band.

The Father and The Son and The Holy Ghost kicks off the journey into the promised land of freedom. Who wouldn't think of the triumvirate of free jazz here. The father and the son are there, Coltrane and Sanders. Only the third tenor saxophonist, Ayler is missing. Apparently there is a tape of a 1966 concert in NYC where all three of them play together in possession of the Coltrane family. The piece starts with a kind of lament by the saxes lead by Coltrane sounding like a sheep's baa. Then Coltrane plays an ascending melodic line. Old school. And he searches for the continuation of that line, stepping into the unknown, overblowing a little. The drummers provide a thick rhythm carpet. Ali just drums in a beatless continuum, Jones still has the beat but it goes in cycles. Sanders joins in later. A dynamic call and response thing with Coltrane is going on. With Sanders having the more nervous, more edgy replies. If Coltrane's sax sounds pure and clear, Sanders is squeaky and over the top. More like free jazz.

The track fuses seamlessly into Compassion, the other piece from side one of the lp. The mood calms down. McCoy Tyner plays the lead. Some impressionist sequences. Foreshadowing Keith Jarrett when he was gathering himself in his solo concerts. Coltrane plays a slow elegic line with long sustained notes. Jones drums predominate. They have a tribal appeal. A sombre African groove. Hypnotic and almost voodoo-like. Side one ends on a meditative note.

Side two with three continuously played pieces starts with Love. A bass solo could be taken as the declaration of love by the man. Coltrane gives the answer with a warm, ascending lyrical line. A lush and full sound. Going up towards the sky. Tenderness. Soothing but intense.

Next is Consequences. Probably my favourite. A duet between Sanders and Coltrane. Sanders plays the shorter staccato notes. Accelerating close to light-speed when Coltrane suddenly drops out. Sanders overblows, elicits the most freakish screams out of his horn. Is this a woman having a nervous breakdown after a quarrel with her man? Coltrane comes back and things calm down slowly. McCoy Tyner comes into the centre with arpeggiated cadences. Suddenly he is on his own. Alone. There is a magic in this stepping back of the other instruments. All the force which has been let loose is suddenly concentrating on the piano. This sounds even more like Keith Jarrett. Probably because of the solo.

It all ends with Serenity on a conciliatory note. Coltrane plays a grave, melancholic melody. You can be serene and sad at the same time in this world.

I am quite enjoying Tom Verlaine's new streamable songwriter album songs and other things. Of course there is his immediately recognizable cool warm guitar sound. Relaxed yet still dynamic. And his characteristic slightly nasal but usually rather low voice. Additionally the fourteen songs are varied and not too long. And they get even better (and calmer) in the course of the album. It starts and ends with an instrumental. If you ask me this is better than the Television records.

What is a summer album? An album you listened to mainly in summer or which you listened to first in summer? An album which transports a kind of summer feeling? But what does that mean? What is heat, what is sun, what is light in music? New Order is summer, Joy Division is winter? An album which was released or recorded in summer? An album with song lyrics about summer? Is Yo La Tengo's The Heart is Beating As One a summer album? Released in late April 1997, I purchased it mid May. When a good friend had killed himself and I had to move on. It was a hot summer in 1997. Catherine and I saw Yo La Tengo in Berlin at the Knaack Club in Prenzlauer Berg. Maybe the best concert I have ever been to in my life. A crowded place, the sweat pearls were rolling down my front, Ira was doing the Hendrix on guitar. Intense. He sweated himself but he didn't care.

Georgia: Shadows James: Stockhom Syndrome Ira: Autumn Sweater

One of the most amazing song triplets ever. There is a progression from winter depression towards summer lightness. All songs are sad but you can dance to the last. Which maybe is the best. Very hard to imagine if you have heard the first two. Which are as tender and fragile as a white petal of an apple tree in May. Autumn Sweater is the end of summer. The fruit. It didn't need the remix. What a sad and beautiful world. Without the sadness it wouldn't be so beautiful.

My love of dub. Which I never developped any further. I only have one album in my collection. On ILM someone made fun of it *). Apparently it is not the best dub album. Maybe the most popular, the easiest, the most obvious but just an album scratching on the surface. Not the real thing. Missing in the roots department. That's how the message came over to me at least. I dunno. The huge bass sound. The dizzyness created by the reverb. The minimising of beats per minute without losing THE BEAT. The coolness, the relaxedness, the late dark night feeling. That sort of music works more on the body than what I usually listen to. An antidote to cerebral, more fragile stuff. Has to be listened to aloud. On big speakers. Here is the first track from the album I am talking about. It's the music of god, isn't it? A god who doesn't know how to make dub music cannot be my god. ;-)

*) On rereading the post I realise that I am definitely over-sensitive when it comes to my fave music

A new Yo La Tengo album! Not really, it's only a kind of best from their annual visits to the radio station WFMU where they play covers listeners request. I just ordered this from their site, it's probably not available anywhere else. The real new album by the Hoboken trio is expected for September as I read here.

Reasons to love Joni Mitchell's Hejira album

I suddenly like The Blue Nile. What has happened? The first album ever which I have mounted from the cellar where all CDs reside I never want to listen to again back to the living-room. His voice is suddenly acceptable. No, it's more than that, it is perfect. It probably has to do with the corky bottle of Retsina I have almost finished. Or maybe with my general feeling of helplessness towards what's happening or not happening in my life. Or the disappointment over Bark Psychosis seminal Hex which I finally got the day before yesterday and which would have been better without Graham Sutton's whispered voice which I now find aggressive in its softness. Hats has clicked, there is something about never writing off anyone. Will Scott Walker win me over one day? He has to stop the over the top crooning for that, I hope.

ps the 2nd listen is as embarrassing as i always remembered them. i'll put on unknown pleasures now. nightmares are more impressive than sweet dreams especially when they are so ferocious.

I am not quite sure what to make of Chan Marshall's latest. It is not exactly middle of the road but it certainly is going to break her to a wider public and I am happy for her. Right now on Amazon it is #8 in the States, #24 in Canada, #23 in the UK, #77 in Germany and #3(!) in France.

It is a little bit of a homecoming album. Released more or less on her 34th birthday and recorded in the deep South in Memphis with an illustrious cast of session musicians like e.g. Al Green sideman Teenie Hodges on guitar and Booker T and the MGs drummer Steve Potts. The sparse instrumentation and rawness of the early records with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley has given way to a lush sound with string arrangements, horns and a laid-back groove. Even the female background vocals are fine. It is still an intimate record and her sexy smooth voice which becomes raspier and smokier with each new album is as touching as ever.

The most surprising thing is that the songs which are more in the vein of her previous songwriter output don't work at all. Most of the second half of the CD starting with the monotonous and uninspired ballad Where Is My Love is a disappointment. Those songs which sometimes verge on country kitsch like Islands are totally dispensable. The last song Love & Communication before the bonus track which is rather pointless as well is slightly better as it rocks out a wee bit but it also misses the urgency of her earlier songs.

The Greatest has a great vibe in the beginning but it cannot compare to the triumvirate of the fragile What Would the Community Think, the mesmerising Moon Pix and the balanced You Are Free.

Here is the phantastic centre piece (I can't think of a more relaxed marriage of piano and sax) Willie which was already released in a much longer version on the Speaking for Trees DVD.