Devadip Carlos Santana* & Turiya Alice Coltrane* – Illuminations

Free Jazz ??? It's Spiritual jazz!!! Who came up with this idea...

Unfortunately, while MOV reissues are usually great, this one does not sound good. My copy sounded flat and compressed even compared to the Spotify version. Not sure this was the problem with my particular copy or a pressing in general, but I had to return it. Sounded just awful for my taste. Replaced it with a Vocalion SACD for a lack of a better option.

My vinyl copy of PC 32900 (al32900) has had the name "Columbia" totally obliterated from both the cover and the vinyl. Can somebody explain why this has happened.

I bought this album during a period when I was into Indian mysticism and my brother bought The Swing of Delight from "Devadip" Carlos Santana which I really enjoyed. I loved the music - there's something about the strings, the harp and long sustained guitar notes that really makes this album special. Unfortunately, it is a bit scratchy towards the end of the side with a trace of groove distortion.

Kudos to Gilles Peterson for dropping /Angel of Air' on Kiss FM in '95/96 and then mixing into Galaxy II Galaxy's 'Journey To The Dragons'.

This is quite a unique album that blew me away. I didn't go expecting an extension of the Santana sound because I realize this was a project outside the scope of the regular Santana releases. By this point, Carlos Santana was deep in Eastern mysticism, being a disciple of guru Sri Chinmoy (John McLaughlin was also a disciple, that's why he collaborated with Mr. Santana the previous year on Love, Devotion and Surrender). Carlos Santana now adopted the Devadip name, and collaborated with someone else inspired by Eastern mysticism, Alice Coltrane (who wasn't a disciple of Chinmoy), widow of John Coltrane. He gets help from some Santana members (including Tom Coster), Billy Cobham, and others. The album starts off with some simple chanting, but what you get after is lot of orchestrated passages with Alice Coltrane giving some nice harp playing (it's to be pointed out, not just by me, that Alice Coltrane was one of the few musicians in jazz to incorporate a harp) and Carlos Santana his trademark guitar playing. Much of this seems more in the Third Stream vein. "Angel of Sunlight" moves away from Third Stream, and into raga-influenced fusion. It is simply unbelievably intense (although it starts off slow with a droning sitar or tamboura, with tabla, before picking up steam), and Billy Cobham plays drums like there's no tomorrow. No wonder Miles Davis hired him to play for him and why he's considered simply one of the greats of fusion drumming. This is just like the most intense moments of Love, Devotion and Surrender, just simply without John McLaughlin's input (since he wasn't on this album, naturally), but like that album, it shows that Carlos Santana can certainly hold his own on guitar. This album has surprisingly little Latin influences, mainly on "Angel of Sunlight" itself, but a lot of the percussion came from tablas, rather than congas and timbales, although the congas do appear as the intensity increases and the sitars (or perhaps tambouras) disappear.

Mainstream Santana fans (who mostly enjoy the band for the hits, be it from the first three albums, or latter-day fans who came to Santana circa 1999 when "Smooth" with Rob Thomas became a huge hit) will probably have a hard time relating to this album. I'm sure even Carlos Santana himself realizes this won't appeal to the average mainstream Santana fan. But for the more adventurous listener, this album is highly recommended!