Contemplazione

Alright, you'll understand... actually, sorry if I acted all smart, it's just that I can be a bit of a pain in the ass about jazz!!

I knew he took some "lessons" from Coleman on how to "play free," and he paid him 30 dollars per lesson... were you referring to that?

I wasn't referring to you in particular, Hymnen, I know you wrote something else, however, I don't see what great musical project there is behind Ascension, compared to Free Jazz. Trilobita, the story of the "mancetta" is grand! What a show, he "copies" the record and sends him a couple of coins!! AH AHAAAAAA

Like every "deformed child of a demigod," this type of album is always unjustly subject to idolization. Many make it their mission to read other, transcendent, hidden meanings into it... there must be something!!! Is it possible that Coltrane made an album that is not only cacophonous but devoid of content? Noooo. And so, let’s delve into spirituality, mysticism, philosophy...

I'm copying and pasting part of an old post of mine regarding Ascension: "the 'Free Jazz' progenitor of Ornette Coleman is somewhat overly plundered in terms of idea, setup, duration, band size, and sound, yet manages to achieve better results. Secondly, let’s be honest: 'Giant Steps,' 'My Favorite Things,' 'A Love Supreme,' 'Crescent,' 'The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings,' besides being epochal as much as, if not more than, 'Ascension,' are also more BEAUTIFUL." Ascension is Coltrane's embrace of an aesthetic, and like every upheaval, it is theatrical, excessive, exaggerated, and draws heavily from the past.

Up 'Gainst the Wall, After The Rain, and Dear Old Stockholm have a precise harmonic sequence (the "chord progression"), it seems to me; India and Impressions, on the other hand, are based on a couple of scales (or modes) each.

Obviously, those live tracks are two great pieces. When I used the word "filler," I meant that at Impulse they were treated as such... In reality, if you take the individual songs, this album can easily be rated 4-4.5! It's like saying, it's the operation that I've never liked...

And now a critique of the album as it is assembled: it combines the results of three different recordings, one live from '61 and two studio from '62 and '63. The two live pieces are present elsewhere in Coltrane's discography, specifically in the complete (or partial) releases of the '61 Village Vanguard concerts, which are among the greatest masterpieces of all jazz (as I have reviewed). Extracting two pieces (almost at random, because there are even better ones) and slapping them into this kind of compilation, out of their context, is a sacrilege for me. Of the studio pieces, only one is a masterpiece, After The Rain. The other two are negligible considering the gems Coltrane has accustomed us to, so one basically pays the price of a CD just for After The Rain. It would be just as well to download the single track for me. This is a misstep for Impulse, not one of its peaks. They had these two or three leftover pieces that barely covered 18 minutes of duration, and instead of throwing them away (or completing an album by recording other tracks), they used the long live pieces as fillers to reach LP length. Shame!

Why are the highs improbable? It's Trane playing! Eric Dolph? Some notes on your writing: there are only two modal pieces out of five, India and Impressions. The latter is not a standard as you define it, nor is it a composition by Coltrane, but Coltrane's reimagining of So What by Miles Davis, which at best can be defined as a "jazz original", where a standard means an evergreen of American songwriters.

For Aqualife: in fact, I have a similar opinion of Ascension and I gave it a nice 4 back then!!