Alice Coltrane - S/D

YES

http://pitchfork.com/news/72008-alice-coltrane-compilation-to-be-released-on-david-byrnes-luaka-bop/

David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label has announced a new Alice Coltrane compilation. It’s called World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, and it’s out May 5. The record features music Coltrane made while she lived at the Sai Anantam Ashram, which she established in 1983. The songs (recorded between 1982 and 1995) had previously been available only on cassettes distributed within her spiritual community.

Luaka Bop worked with Coltrane’s children to locate the original master tapes for the tracks. Engineer Baker Bigsby (John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra) remastered the recordings. The compilation comes with liner notes by Ashley Kahn, interviews with people close to Coltrane, and a conversation about Coltrane between Surya Botofasina (raised on Coltrane’s ashram) and Pitchfork contributor Andy Beta.

World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda:

01 Om Rama
02 Om Shanti
03 Rama Rama
04 Rama Guru
05 Hari Narayan
06 Journey to Satchidananda
07 Er Ra
08 Keshnava Murahara
09 Krisha Japaye *
10 Rama Katha *

*vinyl only

this is very timely. i've been listening to her ashram tapes nonstop recently, via an incomplete set of youtube clips. it's too bad they're not re-releasing the albums (4, i think?) in full, but having at least some of it on vinyl will be a real treat. i can't wait.

OMG, that's amazing news. I wasn't even aware of that material but I love Alice Coltrane so much.

there was discussion about it on another alice thread recently (can't find it, RIP search), but this is a good place to start: http://dublab.com/rbma-radio-saved-from-the-fire-the-ashram-tapes-of-alice-coltrane-by-frosty/

breaking that down in terms of tracks per album:

Turiya Sings: Rama Katha

Divine Songs: Om Shanti, Rama Guru, Rama Rama, Hari Narayan, Er Ra, Keshava Murahara

Infinite Chants: Om Rama, maybe a different Rama Guru, Krishna Japaye

Glorious Chants: Journey To Satchidananda

so a pretty good overview, this is cool

Two of the albums - Divine Songs and Infinite Chants - are still available on CD, I think; I bought my copies from her ashram bookstore a few years ago. Turiya Sings was reissued on CD by a European label, Be Jazz, in 2015, but I think it was a boot 'cause you can't find copies anywhere anymore and Discogs won't let people sell it there. Glorious Chants was only ever released on CD, way back in 1990, and has never been reissued.

Since I already have the bulk of this material, I probably don't need the compilation, but I am kinda pissed that two of the tracks are vinyl-only.

this is a good place to start: http://dublab.com/rbma-radio-saved-from-the-fire-the-ashram-tapes-of-alice-coltrane-by-frosty/

i should mention that i like that for the writing, not so much for the mix that's included. the mix is good, but tbh i prefer to just put all of this on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhdQEXlQmpI

this is challopsy but i think it might be my favorite alice coltrane album.music doesn't do this to me frequently, to this degree, but it really transports me.

i've never ventured beyond those three impulse albums - monastic trio, ptah el daoud, and journey. journey i first heard when i was about 14 or 15 from my older brother and it's been one of my favorite albums since then. what would be good to go to next?

marcos, check out world galaxy and eternity next, though you should eventually hear everything she did in the 70s and 80s (agree with karl that turiya sings is her best album).

this is her single greatest track imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJo9k-Y0Hzc

as Karl notes, Turiya Sings is great and you can find it on MP3 via Google

Huntington Ashram Monastery is the other early one you are missing there, also great.

World Galaxy gets deeper into the "wall of strings" sound and is kinda expensive but v v good

I was never as big of a fan of the organ-period albums, so I'd go for any of the devotional ones next, the 2 ashram CDs mentioned are also excellent

Check out her next few Impulse albums - Universal Consciousness, World Galaxy, and Lord of Lords. LoL is the least regarded of those, but I think it's my favorite. You may also like Infinity, on which she arranged strings surrounding some otherwise unreleased John Coltrane recordings. A lot of people find that sacrilegious; I think the results are great.

cool thank you all!

universal consciousness is incredible — beautiful orchestral arrangements.
yeah, not sure why they aren't putting out all of the 80s/90s records (maybe they're forthcoming). listened to the comp via promo mp3 this morning, sounds totally wonderful.

oh shit yeah I forgot abt Universal Consciousness, that's pretty essential

I also love Infinity and the massed strings, haters can suck it

re: expensive, there are cheap impulse two-fers pairing World Galaxy/Huntington Ashram Monastery and Universal Consciousness/Lord of Lords.

i've never ventured beyond those three impulse albums - monastic trio, ptah el daoud, and journey.

those are actually my fav 3* to listen to all the way through. i really like large portions of her other 70s albums but often there's a free jazz track that gets a little too intense and i end up skipping. (my jazz collection is full of free jazz that i'm too much of a wimp to endure).

*other than turiya sings, but her devotional albums are almost a different category

the orchestral stuff can get pretty nuts/intense -- it's hard for me to imagine exactly how they got the string players to do what they do. great that she was given the budget to do it though.

listened to the comp via promo mp3 this morning, sounds totally wonderful.

Who's handling it? You can let me know via the burningambulance at gmail address if you like.

got it via an editor via this guy -- http://shorefire.com/team/profile/max-lefkowitz

Two of the albums - Divine Songs and Infinite Chants - are still available on CD, I think

also worth noting that these two discs comprise 8 out of the 10 tracks on this new release...

http://www.innerpath.com/swamini-turiyasangitananda/

Yeah, I have Divine Songs and Infinite Chants on CD too, so it's pretty disingenuous to advertise the songs on this new comp as having "previously been available only on cassette".

That dublab mix really opened this stuff up for me, and I think I listen to the Ashram stuff more than any other Alice these days. I welcome the compilation but would really like the complete set. Hopefully forthcoming!

Suspect so. Luaka Bop comps always seem to kick off a round of original album reissues.

yeah, see also Os Mutantes

yeah imagine all of 'em will be made available on vinyl sometime soon. An introductory comp isn't a bad idea imo -- i imagine most people would still hear the name Alice Coltrane and say "Is she related to John Coltrane?"

Listening to it now. People who've never heard this stuff before are gonna have their skulls popped open like stuck jar lids. (The promo included the two vinyl-only bonus tracks.) It's crazy; her singing voice is almost Sade-like.

ha, i wouldn't go that far but i do enjoy her voice a lot.

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/27/525541596/first-listen-the-ecstatic-music-of-alice-coltrane-turiyasangitananda

this is so so good.

yes

TBH, I think the "hidden treasure" status of these recordings have made people overrate them. I own two of the albums this compilation is mostly culled from (Infinite Chants and Divine Chants), and I'm sure they were important to her and her congregation, but mostly it's just rather functional music of/for religious services.

Besides some neat synth flourishes, there isn't really the sort of unique and original approach she had when expressing the same sentiments (and even interpreting the same music, such as with "Hare Krishna" on Universal Consciousness) through the jazz idiom and with jazz players.

I dunno, I haven't heard Turiya Sings, so maybe that one is really mind-blowing, but the chant albums aren't. Without her name attached they'd be filler in the New Age shelf of your record store. They're pleasant to listen, to be sure, but there are loads of New Age albums more interesting and more worthy of rediscovery.

strongly disagree, the loose spacy unrehearsed feeling of these recordings is what I love about them. I certainly prefer them to the organ-centered records of the 70's.

yeah, disagree as well -- i think what's impressive about her devotional stuff is that it still has so much of her own musical sensibility. even though it has a functional side as you say, it always feels deeply personal to my ears.

i was kind of meh on the idea of releasing a single compilation rather than just the individual albums (if they would have done that and made it a box, i would have bought it).

but i have to say, after listening to the npr full album stream, the way the sequencing navigates through these albums is perfect. the second side is just...fucking intense. "Journey To Satchidananda" is maybe my favorite thing she ever did ("Journey In Satchidananda" might be my number two. i think i just love her musical version of satchidananda and adjacent realms?), so that's going to naturally elevate the side. but 'Er Ra' manages to sustain the serene momentum like you're puffing up over the clouds a bit. and then when the closing 'Keshava Murahara' deploys the sweeping synth sound that she uses throughout the rest of the selections (and throughout all four of the albums from this period), it somehow hits so much harder. especially on headphones. it is intense and almost unbearable.

yeah the comp does feel thoughtfully sequenced ... i assume after it sells 12,000,000 copies and singlehandedly sets the world on a better path they'll just reish the albums.

Wow, I haven't heard this material before. I almost can't believe how sample-ready it is (and how modern some of it sounds!), surely it's been sampled in a lot of rap/dance music?

The air raid siren synths!

I think the albums are next in line for release. Or at least that's what I've heard.

And Tuomas so not OTM. This is strange, beautiful and essential music.

yeah the comp does feel thoughtfully sequenced ... i assume after it sells 12,000,000 copies and singlehandedly sets the world on a better path they'll just reish the albums.

Like we discussed upthread, two of the albums (which provide most of the tracks on this comp) are still available, I think someone even posted a link where to buy them. I ordered them from some New Age store a few years ago. I think it's only Turiya Sings that's been available on cassette only, the story with this comp's press release that the others have never been reissued on CD is simply not true.

xxp yesssss

records that are in-print and much more readily available get reissued all the time, what's the big deal

Listening more I think I have heard some of this material before, but it was probably way back in filesharing days?

Turiya Sings was bootlegged by some German label in 2015, but that edition has since been withdrawn.

My favorite tracks from these are the ones where there's a sort of gospel-ish male singer atop the synths and Indian percussion. It's a very cool blend of sounds.

"Like we discussed upthread, two of the albums (which provide most of the tracks on this comp) are still available, I think someone even posted a link where to buy them"

I just had a look at the Inner path website and it doesn't seem that the discs are available. I'm happy for Luaka Bop to get this material a bit of a promotional push and I do hope the individual releases are reissued.

the story with this comp's press release that the others have never been reissued on CD is simply not true.

this claim only appears at the pitchfork link above. neither the luaka bop site nor the npr piece say this.

Luaka Bop has had these remastered from what I understand (? Dunno since I don't have the comp handy)

Just searched my Gmail archives and found an email I sent to The Wire's then-reviews editor, telling him that all four of these albums were going to be reissued on CD, along with an entire disc of unreleased music in a similar style, by a label called RKM, formed by Ravi Coltrane, his wife Kathleen, and clarinetist Mike McGinnis. That was in January 2014. Coltrane and his wife have since split, as far as I know, so that's probably why that never happened.

I don't hear much difference between the CDs I have and the posted online on the NPR site? Certainly they didn't particularly call for any remastering, they sound fine. But I get it that making them more easily available is a reason enough for a reissue. I would definitely buy Turiya Sings if they ever come to reissuing it, since with that one it really is impossible to find a copy. Seems like the comp only has one song from that album though?

(xpost)

breaking that down in terms of tracks per album:

Turiya Sings: Rama Katha

Divine Songs: Om Shanti, Rama Guru, Rama Rama, Hari Narayan, Er Ra, Keshava Murahara

Infinite Chants: Om Rama, maybe a different Rama Guru, Krishna Japaye

Glorious Chants: Journey To Satchidananda

so a pretty good overview, this is cool

― sleeve, Thursday, March 2, 2017 9:32 AM (one month ago)