Trane's Ascension

i reccomend listening to it a couple of times and trying to hear communication between the players (echoed phrases, moments of bizarre synergy, dynamic shifts instigated by one or two players) and if you're still not digging it, take a break for a few days and let it all sink in.

Also, though this is the most prolonged statement, the other records pave the way. Get those too! 'Meditations' is a good gateway between 'Love Supreme' and 'Ascension'.

I can tell from your post that you already love it, c'mon...

Whereas with coltrane there's something pretty confused about it: my guess is that coltrane had never left hard bop (I don't know that for a fact but its just something abt his palying that is not that satisfying at times, I'm just trying to speculate here) and then he bought players who played in that to play with ppl playing free and that tension makes for unique records; I haven't quite got my head around some of that (though i really enjoy 'live in japan' set).

If I want a seriously heavy Coltrane trip, I listen to "Interstellar Space".

(re: Karl's Ascension/Merzbow comment, I "wrote" a noise track whose sounds were entirely sampled from a drum solo on "Interstellar Space"!)

What?

taking a break with this record is good advice; make experiences with it special. some people can listen to 'ascension' all day long, but this is a record I've listened to less than 20 times in 10 years, and each time it leaves a deeper mark.

I agree with this statement. When I first got the album, I found it hard to make it through the song. A few months later I was in a record store where it was playing and it completely bowled me over. I played it the other night for the first time in years, and once again was amazed by it. It does seem more structured now, and not as completely formless as it struck me when I first heard it. But I think it's because I didn't force myself to listen to it in order to try and understand it that it impresses me each time I do decide to listen to it.

(Incidentally, Interstellar Space is possibly my favourite document of recorded sound EVER!)

TS: Edition I vs. Edition II?

In Grove's Dictionary Max Harrison refers to Ascension as "a deeply troubled record," and it's clearly a prayer for something which can't quite be obtained or reached - compare the absolute assurance of Ayler's parallel work of the time, playing like a man whose prayer has been answered.

My major problem with Ascension is, as I've noted elsewhere, Coltrane - he constantly tugs back towards the Red Garland days, harmonically and rhythmically, doesn't quite manage to break loose, like someone who's enthusiastic about the New Thing but is perhaps a bit too Old really to dive into it with complete commitment. The conflict is further complicated by the inclusion of Freddie Hubbard and McCoy Tyner as, effectively, straight men - when Hubbard begins his solo the rhythm section immediately and instinctively sildes back into 4/4 modal mode and we are suddenly in the middle of an average 1965 Blue Note recording session. Tyner makes a manful attempt at being more oblique than his norm - the displaced tone clusters in his solo suggest recent absorption in Paul Bley's work - but never quite convinces as a free player, and his personal discomfort in the free zone has been extensively noted, not least by Tyner himself.

Archie Shepp manages a reasonable compromise in his solo feature, which is pretty much Ben Webster on a spaceship in Watts; but 25-year-old Pharaoh Sanders is the man of the match, snarling in the ensembles of supplication, barely hiding his impatience to get out front, and when his tenor finally erupts it is like a fist in the face - and there is an audible pause of uncertainty from both Tyner and Garrison as if they're not at all sure how to deal with this abrupt outbreak. It could be said, though, that Marion Brown and John Tchicai's altos are the most troubled and uncertain voices on display here - both seem not quite with us, as if they were ghosting for Dolphy.

The seesaw ensembles are soberly and solemnly constructed on a firm modal basis; there isn't the damn-you get-it-done-yesterday explosiveness of Machine Gun, the programmatic chaos of Haden's "Circus '68/'69" or the partly deprogrammed tumult of Westbrook's "Conflict" - though all of those three had obvious political subtexts. Ascension forgoes the political entirely in favour of the spiritual - so in modern terms it is comparatively quite for a "free jazz" record, but in structural and politico-aesthetic terms considerably less "free" than the subsequent Alice/Rashied small group work. Interstellar Space is maybe the only time when Coltrane managed to shake the modal monkey off his back, and that probably because there were no extraneous elements to disturb the direct interaction between his tenor and Ali's drums.

Coltrane
Johnson
Sanders
Hubbard
Tchicai
Shepp
Brown
Tyner

hmm i'm trying to find out who plays what on this, i know the order of players but can't really pick up on the differences in tone yet

i think i'd need something like Johnson solo @ 10:00, Sanders @ 18:00 minutes

yeah...