qpsm*unit - great symbolisms

barabara sounds sez: 

Time to get spiritual with an album that that emerged from the Tribe/Ra stable a few years back (4 to be precise). It barely raised a ripple in the general consciousness over here [UPDATE: or anywhere, going from the comments so far]. Time to rectify that a bit...

As a member of the Tribe crew from back in the day, David Durrah should need little introduction.* Nor of course does the Sun Ra connection. But I have to say I know little or nothing about his cohorts on this well-under-the-radar album which was released by P-Vine here as part of its Black Ark series. 

There are some lovely slinky, funky, modal, meandering, chaotic, chanting, spiritual space jams here, especially the title track — my favorite. Plus the reworking of the old track "venus flytrap" which Durrah first recorded with Doug Hammond. But it's all good. 

And too good not to share.

*Katonah posted his classic Sea of Numen over at Private Press here…

And should you wish to go to the source, there's a bit more info on the qpsm site here…


tracks:
great symbolism; angelic streams; silent inferno; that's how I feel, ra; orion nebula; venus fly trap; that's how I feel, ra (retrack)

John Coltrane on Open Culture

Open Culture sez:

The great jazz saxophone player John Coltrane was born 88 years ago today. To mark the occasion we present this rare document… Coltrane's handwritten outline of his groundbreaking jazz composition, A Love Supreme…

Lewis Porter (author of JC: His Life and Music) sez:

This is something very unusual. It's not the way he usually improvises. It's not really improvised. It's something that he's doing… He ends up playing this little "Love Supreme" theme in all 12 possible keys…

barabara sounds sez: 

So what are you waiting for? Get yourself over to www.openculture.com. Besides that rare artifact (the manuscript above), there's also a link to the NPR interview with Porter that I took that extract from. Plus down the bottom, some other previous nifty Coltrane posts.

I was late getting to the party that is Open Culture. Just in case anyone else isn't aware of this brilliant resource, there are some wicked jazz-related posts. Such as this one: The Universal Mind of Bill Evans...