Albert Ayler “Revelations”, 4CD Box, Elemental 2022

As Marc Ribot, author of a project around Albert Ayler music titled Spiritual Unity in 2005 with fellows Chad Taylor on drums, Roy Campbell on trumpet and former Ayler’s bass player Henry Grimes, said in an old interview for an online jazz magazine, listening to Ayler’s music on record is like to hear a strange human sacrifice happening in the room next to yours.

Obviously he was referring to some of his favorite Ayler records like Spiritual Unity, recorded in 1964 by a trio featuring Ayler on tenor saxophone, Gary Peacock on bass and Sunny Murray on drums, who has this haunted quality: in particular the drums are dusty enough to seem coming from another world, the world of spirits, and the saxophone honks and squeals during the solos in a way that gives the listener this idea of suffering, at less until you don’t become confident with this sound and idea of music.

Last decades were great in order to know better Ayler’s music: ESP rereleased all of his back catalogue, including many of Albert Ayler masterpieces like the one sided Bells, in 2004 a 10 discs boxset titled Holy Ghost was released by Revenant, comprising music not published until that year coming from 1962-1970, amongst which the incredible performance held at the John Coltrane funeral march.

In addition to these, saxophonist Peter Brotzmann reissued in another boxset all the recordings by his Die Like a Dog Quartet in 2007, an hommage to the incredible life and death of Ayler narrated musically by Brotz with Toshinori Kondo on trumpet, William Parker on bass and Hamid Drake on drums. Something delightful for all the Ayler fans scattered into the world. Unluckily all this material is limited editions, and in 2022 they’re quite unavailable for the masses.

Imagine my joy when I found out this 4CD boxset titled Revelations was issued this year by the label Elemental: I had to grab a copy myself, and I did. All around the web but also on paper you’ll find a division of Ayler career in two parts: the early years and the Impulse!, commercial years of rock fusion. Nothing more false. To tell the truth, there are three periods in Ayler music: the first formative years, full of changes in his style, a period comprised between the release of Spiritual Unity and the first live albums on Impulse!, where Ayler’s music passed from that haunted quality we talked about to a more innodic shape, and then another third period in which he tried new music as he always did.

In this last period, Ayler tried to reimmerse himself in his first rhythm and blues roots, mixing them with electric guitars but also with pipes, Mary Mariah – his wife – voice, and different musicians behind them. In the concerts you’ll find in this box recorded during the Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, featuring for the first time ALL the music played by the quartet the first night and the quintet enlarged thanks to the presence of pianist Call Cobbs, old pioneer of Ayler’s first days, it is as if Ayler was trying to summarise all his different periods in order to gain momentum for a new adventure.

Obviously all the criticism for Mary Parker appereances on records, and the guitars completely absent from these live performances, fade away in front of such compact, spiritual driven, epiphanic material. From the beginning of Music is The Healing Force of the Universe, taken from the Impulse! same-titled album, the sacred fire of the performance is clear, as clear is the direction of music, that of the ‘classic’, which means ‘innovative’, Ayler free music. But this four CDs are full of surprises: Mary Maria plays soprano saxophone, and she’s a not completely refined player as his husband, but anyway able to impress.

On the other hand the rhythm section, comprising Steve Tintweiss on bass and Allen Blairman on drums, is a synthesys of every rhythm section Ayler had in the past, suitable for the present shape of Ayler’s music. You’ll hear also Albert Ayler imitating the sound of his sax with the voice, in a strange scat that anticipates more elaborated forms of avant garde singing in the next decades, and classic tunes as Spirits Rejoice (the famous ‘Marseilleise’), Spirits, Ghosts, and the more recents Holy Family, Zion Hill and Love Cry in new suits.

Differently from other boxes issued in these last years, as Eric Dolphy’s Musical Prophet 3 CD boxset or the flamboyant 4 CD boxset Sun Ra – Egypt 1971, this box is a little bit more expensive. But the price worth not only because it was remastered completely from the original sources for the first time, but also because of a beautiful booklet of 100 pages full of essays, notes, photos, and testimonies by peers, mostly modern, like John Zorn and Bill Laswell.

Ayler was a true innovator, and also, maybe, a tormented soul, we don’t know clearly even after many years, but his music is here for us to stay after all these decades as something talking to our souls and ears, and it is full of ideas for younger players. Those who will listen to it carefully during time will be captured for life.