Albert Ayler Quartet - The Hilversum Session

Usually when a good band plays, it sounds like the drummer is creating a couch or pocket for the rest of the band to comfortably sit in. With jazz it's often more like the drummer is an icy lake and the other instruments are figure skaters, skipping around in circles on the rhythm. On this record Albert Ayler's saxophone is the one that everyone else sits in, but instead of a couch or an icy lake, it is like Ayler is dangling the rest of the band at the end of a string that he is slowly twirling around himself. Better yet, a yo-yo that never quite makes it back to his hand. At first every rhythmic and melodic motif sounds random and thrown-together, like each member doesn't really care what the rest of the band is doing or even what key or meter they're playing in. Gradually you start to notice that Ayler's sax and Don Cherry's trumpet converge regularly, playing the same random-seeming squawks of notes simultaneously, with the bass (Garry Peacock) and drums (Sonny Murray) falling into place after like the horns just fell down the stairs and pulled the rhythm section after them. That is to say, the rhythm is there, it's just stretched and squeezed a bit, and the different instruments are following it at different speeds. I don't know if that makes any sense, and my guess is that to most people it still wouldn't make sense even if they were listening to the music at the same time. The lack of piano on a lot of so-called free jazz is probably the biggest barrier to most people's listening enjoyment, whether they realize it or not. The piano is so often the essential glue that holds a jazz group together and makes it cohere. On this album and a lot of others from this time period and in this circle, there is no piano and it makes the music seem stark, disconnected, disjointed. Until you start to figure out the underlying structures that only sort of call attention to themselves. Then, at least for me, I have trouble seeing just where a piano would fit in. This is an album will make at least 90 out of 100 people walk out of the room, or at least unable to concentrate on anything. Of the other ten people, nine will be able to stand it, and maybe even find it interesting, but only one will find it beautiful. That person will cherish the sound and be engulfed by it. I may or may not be that person.