Alice Coltrane - Journey In Satchidananda
There is a spiritualism here that was evident in some of the records she made before this, such as Ptah, The El Daoud and Huntington Ashram Monastery. I’ve lost count of the number of people who would come up to me and go, “What the hell is this?” when I used to DJ back in the day. From the minute it starts it just draws you in. It goes beyond what’s actually in the grooves itself. It just opens up in a spatial sense and again, this is probably key to a lot of the records that I’ve chosen today. This is very evocative of dry, arid, smoky heat and you can almost feel like you are transported somewhere in India when listening to it. A lot of it is made on more traditional instruments that were normally used for jazz. So you’ve got this really perfect blend of Eastern instrumentation with the very stark contrasts of her piano playing but all tied together with this very celestial wash that surrounds them with a lot of what she’s doing on that harp. And there’s Pharoah Sanders, who makes this record. It’s almost his. This and his own record Thembi are so perfect; you can’t really find fault with him on these records. Even the last track ‘Isis And Osiris’, which was recorded live at The Village Gate club in New York, so is a lot more minimal line up of musicians, it still just creates this space that is overwhelming. It really does hit all the right buttons. There is something very, very, very special about this record.