John Coltrane – A Love Supreme

Amazon Review

A Love Supreme is a suite about redemption, a work of pure spirit and song that encapsulates all the struggles and aspirations of the 1960s. Following hard on the heels of the lyrical, swinging Crescent, A Love Supreme heralded Coltrane’s search for spiritual and musical freedom, as expressed through polyrhythm’s, modalities and purely vertical forms that seemed strange to some jazz purists but which captivated more adventurous listeners (and rock fellow travellers such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, and the Byrds), while initiating a series of volatile, unruly prayer offerings, including Kulu Su Mama, Ascension, Om, Meditations, Expression, Interstellar Space. From the urgent speech-like timbre of his tenor, to the serpentine textures and earthy groove of Elvin Jones’s drumming, Coltrane’s suite proceeds with escalating intensity, conveying a hard-fought wisdom and a beckoning serenity in the prayer-like drones of “Psalm”, where Jones rolls and rumbles like thunder as Garrison and Tyner toll away suggestively–all the while Coltrane searches for that one climactic note worthy of the love he wants to share. –Chip Stern – click here to read original article

My Little Empire Review

John Coltrane – A Love Supreme! This is as cool as it sounds. Jazz at its best and sometime most frantic. You can close your eyes and you are in that smokey room with a small stage at the top with lights down low, whiskey poured and Coltrane on his trumpet and the drummer Elvin Jones just barley keeping up and sometime passing out Coltrane as he sounds out a Love Supreme.

Stand Out Tracks:

A Love Supreme, Pt 1 – Acknowledgement
A Love Supreme, Pt 4 – Psalm

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