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Impulse!

Black Unity
2024 Stock. For 1971’s Black Unity, Pharaoh Sanders added groove to foundation of spiritual and free jazz he had explored on his previous Impulse! albums. The result is a piercing and emotive 37-minute rhythm-driven title track exploration of African, Latin, aborigine and Native American sounds. "By 1971, Pharoah Sanders had taken the free thing as far as he could and still live with himself. He was investigating new ways to use rhythm -- always his primary concern -- inside his music and more t…
Thembi
Pharoah Sanders recorded the songs that comprise Thembi in the winter of ’70/’71, in between  sessions with Alice Coltrane that would eventually become her masterpiece Journey In Satchidananda LP. The same compelling spirituality that embued Coltrane’s masterpiece with a mood of stately calm and grace pervades Thembi. ‘On Thembi, that was the first time that I ever touched a Fender Rhodes electric piano. We got to the studio in California — Cecil McBee had to unpack his bass, the drummer had to …
Four For Trane
** Official reissue by Elemental music in collaboration with Impulse Records! Special Gatefold Edition. ** Recorded for the Impulse label by Archie Shepp in 1965, four of the five tracks on Four for Trane are reworkings of pieces originally recorded in 1959 & 1960 by John Coltrane, and released on his Giant Steps (1960) and Coltrane Plays the Blues (1962) albums. They are rearranged here by Shepp and trombonist Roswell Rudd. The album also features trumpeter Alan Shorter (Wayne Shorter’s brother…
Carnegie Hall '71
Kicking off what will be an Alice Coltrane year with more releases to come in the next 12 months, is a previously unreleased, killer live recording from 1971.  Recorded live, by Impulse! at a charity gala given at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Integral Yoga Institute in 1971, this incredible set never saw commercial release until now. The gala concert was one of two halves with the first two transcendental tunes by Alice taken from the album she had just released on Impulse! and then two …
Lord Of Lords
Remastered reissue on Impulse/Elemental Music. Alice Coltrane was among the most important creative voices of 20th century. A woman like no other, who sculpted a body of music, so singular, that it can be distinguished a mile out – sounding like nothing, before. Originally released in 1972, Lord Of Lords was Alice Coltrane's final album for Impulse! and the last installment in her awe-inspiring trilogy that also included Universal Consciousness and World Galaxy. While all three records featured …
Psychicemotus
Psychicemotus was released in 1965 and features Yusef Lateef on various flutes and tenor saxophone, Georges Arvanitas on piano, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer James Black. And while the Coltrane era of modal and free jazz was in full swing, Lateef always followed his own muse, and continued looking forward while looking back to ancient musics. His use of bamboo and Chinese wood flutes on the title track and "Bamboo Flute Blues" added not only dimension and texture, but rhythmic invention to…
Crescent
*2023 stock* "John Coltrane's Crescent from the spring of 1964 is an epic album, showing his meditative side that would serve as a perfect prelude to his immortal work A Love Supreme. His finest quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones supports the somewhat softer side of Coltrane, and while not completely in ballad style, the focus and accessible tone of this recording work wonders for anyone willing to sit back and let this music enrich and wash over you. While not quite at th…
Out Of The Afternoon
"Drummer Roy Haynes was just about everywhere in the golden age of jazz, recording classic albums with some of the most legendary names of the genre. The hard-bop-verging-on-post-bop Out Of The Afternoon is an excellent example of the adventurous spirit that was taking flight in the jazz world in the early 1960s. Haynes swings as the leader of this 1962 Impulse! session, featuring A-list jazzmen Roland Kirk (multiple instruments including stritch and nose flute!), Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Henr…
Liberation Music Orchestra
*2023 stock* "The arrangements by Carla Bley are miracles of dynamics, rising and falling in volume and velocity and the awe-inspiring balance of collective ensembles improvising freely through swellings and contractions of individual voices entering and leaving the mysterious swirling circle of simultaneous songs as diverse as the number of performers yet never lacking in the kind of transporting telepathic unity that makes this multiplicity of musical lines such a far cry from the chaos of the…
Fire Music
2023 restock; originally released in 1965. 2019 reissue. Some of the most exciting jazz albums to listen to are those that try to strike a middle ground between the mainstream and the Avant-garde. One such example is Archie Shepp’s Fire Music: an often-fascinating album, rich in compositional and improvisational prowess. Employing a sextet including drummer Joe Chambers and alto saxophonist Marion Brown, Shepp puts together a record that is both challenging and accessible to most listeners. Fire…
Space Is The Place
Tip! The holy grail for Sun Ra collectors and fans, an album that forever gave them a slogan to live by! The record's different than some of the other Arkestra work from the time – in that it's a bit tighter and more spiritual, more in keeping with the style of the Blue Thumb label, for which it was recorded – and soaring along on a wave of post-Coltrane spiritual jazz enthusiasm. Side one features the ultimate recording of "Space Is The Place" – an anthemic tune that blends chanting, modal rhyt…
Love Cry
Tip! Love Cry (1968) is a true Albert Ayler manifesto: a sometimes disorienting combination of childish dirges, band music and folk melodies, all revised according to the New Thing perspective. Experimental album (for the time) containing some of the saxophonist's most famous tunes, such as "Ghosts." Ayler's last recording with his brother Donald, while the others are double bassist Alan Silva and drummer Milford Graves, with (surprise) contributions from harpsichordist Call Cobbs.
Attica Blues
This Impulse! classic is one of the saxophonist’s most lasting and enduring works. With its powerful avant-garde tracks and strong political messages, the album is one of Shepp's most successful large-group projects. Rolling Stone wrote that it is "not just a masterpiece of protest: it is more a political/religious experience, an appeal to higher human consciousness to, for God's sake, help us out of this torment."
Vista
Saxophonist Marion Brown ended his '70s stint at Impulse! Records with this serene and colorful album. It features musicians such as drummer Ed Blackwell and bassist Reggie Workman, plus Stanley Cowell on acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes. While Brown wrote the blissful coaster Vista, the five other compositions are well-chosen, starting with an inviting version of Cowell's "Maimoun" and an impressionistic and deeply meditative take on Stevie Wonder's "Visions".
Pneuma
Violinist and composer Michael White was among the first to play the violin in avant-garde jazz, and became one of the first jazz violinists to play jazz rock fusion. During his career, he played with Sun Ra, McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Pharoah Sanders and others.
Evenings At The Village Gate
Tip! A long-lost live recording featuring one of John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy's 1961 sets at New York's Village Gate has been unearthed for release this summer. Evenings at the Village Gate was recorded in the summer before Coltrane's legendary slate of November 1961 dates at the Village Vanguard, with a similar quintet lineup: the short-lived tandem of Coltrane and Dolphy alongside drummer Elvin Jones, pianist McCoy Tyner and bassist Reggie Workman. While the trailblazing Village Vanguard show…
Kwanza
These 1969 recordings (released 5 years later) combine Archie Shepp’s free jazz bonafides and a blend of blues and funk through an African lens, all in a big band setting. The all-star brass section, featuring James Spaulding and Charles Davis on sax along with trombonist Graham Moncur III lead the way on stand outs including “New Africa” and “Spoo Pee Doo.” This Verve By Request LP features transfers from analog tapes and remastered on 180-gram vinyl, pressed at Third Man in Detroit.
Ptah, The El Daoud
* Recorded in the basement studio of the Coltrane family home in Dix Hills in 1970, Alice Coltrane’s fourth album is a transcendent masterpiece of spiritual jazz. The title track is an ode to the Egyptian God, Ptah (the El Daoud meaning “the beloved”). Many moments on the album reach what Coltrane herself defined the term Turiya as: “A state of consciousness — the high state of Nirvana, the goal of human life.” Verve By Request Series features 180-gram vinyl, pressed at Third Man in Detroit..  *…
A Love Supreme
2023 Official reissue. Transfers from the analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging. One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Tra…
The Sorcerer
Gábor Szabó was one of the most original guitarists to emerge in the 1960s, mixing his Hungarian folk music heritage with a deep love of jazz and crafting a distinctive, largely self-taught sound. This evocative 1967 set for Impulse! features nine live tracks recorded at Boston's Jazz Workshop, capturing Szabó and his finest working group at their peak.
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