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

This is not just ecstatic music, but cosmic soul music. If you buy one archival recording this year, let this be it.

These sublime ensemble recordings reflect not just the result but the process of deep enlightenment. Coltrane, performing with ashram members, illuminates Hindu devotionals with meditative Indian instrumentation, a sparkling Oberheim OB-8 synthesizer, droning Wurlitzer lines, and full-bodied singing evoking the Detroit church choirs of her youth.

It feels like a natural evolution of what Coltrane was doing, anyway.

The 24-piece choir which accompanies most of the pieces here are a lightwave beam keeping the listener afloat, yet it's Coltrane's own vocals which resonate the most deeply.

The music offered here constitutes the expected fluid mixture of rhetoric and instrumentation.

One tiny complaint: the original tapes were intended as complete listening experiences, immersive acts of prayer with transportive qualities of a religious or psychedelic experience. For the time being, this is just a taste of the full bewitching trip. [Jun 2017, p.102]

Amid all the proto-ambient wash is much soul and even funk, albeit of a lo-fi variety.

Luaka Bop has done a remarkable job of collecting recordings that were originally scattered across multiple releases and giving them the feeling of a consistent whole.

Even those untouched by spiritual connotations of this music should be able to embrace its truly numinous energy.

You may find it tough to get past the religiosity, but if you can, there’s real magic here.

The results are looser and less formal than might be expected, more imbued with soulful swing, slipping back and forth between the modes and incorporating ecstatic gospel-style call and response passages against a patinated backdrop of shakers, percussion, swooping synths and droning organ.