Spiritual Unity is an album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 by the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 saxophonist

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...

 (1936-1970). It was recorded for the ESP-Disk

ESP-Disk

ESP-Disk is a New York-based record label, founded in 1964 by lawyer Bernard Stollman.From the beginning, the label's goal has been to provide its recording artists with complete artistic freedom, unimpeded by any record company interference or commercial expectations—a philosophy summed-up by the...

 label and was a key free jazz

Free jazz

Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 recording which brought Ayler to international attention as it was so "shockingly different". It featured two versions of Ayler's most famous composition Ghosts.

Reception

The critic Ekkehard Jost wrote that "Ayler's negation of fixed pitches finds a counterpart in Peacock's and Murray's negation of the beat. In no group of this time is so little heard of a steady beat (...) The absolute rhythmic freedom frequently leads to action on three independent rhythmic planes." Maintaining these qualities required deep group interaction. Ayler himself said of the record "We weren't playing, we were listening to each other". The Penguin Guide to Jazz

The Penguin Guide to Jazz

The Penguin Guide to Jazz is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which are currently available in Europe or the United States...

selected this album as part of its suggested "Core Collection" and awarded it a "crown".

Track listing

All compositions by Albert Ayler

1. "Ghosts: First variation" – 5:12
2. "The Wizard" – 7:20
3. "Spirits" – 6:46
4. "Ghosts: Second variation" – 10:01
   • Recorded in New York, July 10, 1964

Musicians

• Albert Ayler
  Albert Ayler
  Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...
  
   - tenor saxophone (just listed as "saxophone" in liner notes)
• Gary Peacock
  Gary Peacock
  Gary Peacock is an American jazz double-bassist.-Biography:After military service in Germany, in the early sixties he worked on the west coast with Barney Kessel, Bud Shank, Paul Bley and Art Pepper, then moved to New York. He worked there with Bley, the Bill Evans trio , and Albert Ayler's trio...
  
   - bass
• Sunny Murray
  Sunny Murray
  James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray is one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming.-Biography:...
  
  - percussion