Go Ask Alice

Fuck. This album is so good I could eat it. It would probably taste really fucking good too. But then I wouldn't be able to listen to it. Which would be a shame, cos this is one of the most audaciously beautiful records you will ever hear. It's also totally fucking shameless, wildly psychedelic and manages to sound corny and dated as hell yet futuristic and visionary at the same time.

Dizzyingly kaleidescopic strings wrap themselves around Alice's harp and wurlitzer, born aloft on the shimmerings wings of Ben Riley's cymbal work, but grounded deep in the earth by his drums and Reggie Workman's queasy double bass, this record could so easily descend into the realms of cosmic kitsch in any other hands but Alice's, particularly on the tracks 'Galaxy Around Olodumare', 'Galaxy In Turiya' and 'Galaxy In Satchidananda', where the swirling string clusters and buzzing tambouras could so easily sound like a new-age Esquivel were it not for her sensitivity to tone colours which produces a kind of glowing, honeyed dissonance that I've never really heard in any other jazz.

No one sounds like Alice Coltrane, especially on organ. That fuzzed, slurring wurlitzer cascading through modes and raags before exploding into abstraction one minute, then nailing 'My Favourite Things' and 'A Love Supreme' to the floor in a way you suspect John hadn't thought of, churchy and funky, striking sparks off Frank Lowe's awesome, spluttering saxophones and LeRoy Jenkins' brilliantly acrid violin whilst the rhythm section get into that same elasticated free groove thing that the Art Enemble found themselves in on 'Rock Out' and 'Theme De Yoyo' and produced Pharoah Sanders jaw-dropping 'Balance'. Damn it's good.