Cuneiform: Healing Force – The Songs Of Albert Ayler / Dieses Wochenende für FIVE

„Albert Ayler’s later works (Love Cry, New Grass and Music is the Healing Force of the Universe) seem to be generally reviled. Through meditations, dreams, and visions, the players on this project were given the message to once again attempt to send the people of earth a message of love, peace, and spiritual understanding. We selected a representative set of tunes for this material and essentially let it play itself through us. We hope you will be as surprised as we still are by the results of this invocational experiment. We hope you will like this record.“ – Henry Kaiser, producer and guitarist

 

Vinny Golia – reeds
Aurora Josephson – voice
Henry Kaiser – guitar
Mike Keneally – piano, guitar and voice
Joe Morris – guitar and double bass
Damon Smith – double bass
Weasel Walter – drums 

All compositions by Albert Ayler with lyrics by Mary Maria Parks, except for New New Grass and New Message by Golia/Morris/Smith.

Recorded May 3, 2006 by Stephen Hart at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, CA.
Produced by Henry Kaiser.

Seven major figures from the art-punk, free-jazz, brutal prog, improvisational and modern jazz world come together for a ROCKING tribute to the unfairly ignored, misunderstood and vilified late period works of Albert Ayler.
These late period songs have always seemed to me like they may have been some of the most personally spiritually resonant for Ayler, but the musicians and the culture of the late 1960s were possibly not able to successfully translate and perform his concept of spirituality, free jazz, boogaloo, nursery rhythms, marching bands, blues and r’n’b, and certainly the free-jazz fans were not ready to accept it.
Now, 40 years and many stylistic mash-ups later, perhaps these works can be better appreciated.