Pharoah Sanders Albums Poll

i've heard maybe 1/4 of these

voted for izipho zam because it feels the most well balanced, it has leon thomas, the way the tune emerges on the title track always blows my mind. i might have voted for karma, tauhid, thembi, black unity, others - i could have voted for meditations or live at the village vanguard again! if they were included. i'd like to know more of the post-70s stuff

Voted for Thembi. Need to relisten to a lot of these.

I am no expert but I found The Trance of Seven Colours to be a really special late(r) LP

Elevastion has levitation . KInd of internal glow. Awesome , so I bet Live At the East is even better.
Something deeply psychedelic about Spiritual jazz like his first few lps or at least the turn of the 60s to 70s ones. Haven't heard teh 1st s/t one as far as I know.
Did just bung Anthology with the edited versions of the long tracks on for thsi week's bedroom listening. Trip probably that much more complete on the complete versions like.

Only familiar with 6/34 but looking forward to exploring beyond those. Currently, I'd pick Izipho Zam. Love the Maleem Mahmoud Ghania collab, maybe a poll on collaborations after this one?

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/the-portal/the-primer-pharoah-sanders
The Wire's made their piece on key Sanders albums available

^^^

I wrote that. It was originally intended to be a feature, but Sanders hated doing interviews. I called him up, we talked for about ten minutes, he was very nice, but he was just absolutely not interested in discussing his art. So I wrote the Primer instead.

voted for izipho zam because it feels the most well balanced

i agree with this, there’s even a track called “balance”! on the other hand i’ve been getting more and more into “tauhid” and i probably listen to that more now, so might go for that one

went with jewels of thought just 'cause I love Hum-Allah

xxp is that common where an artist won't want to participate in a story you're doing, but they'll basically hang out and chat for a while on the phone as they get that across? That happened to someone else I know back in school when they tried to do a story on Fugazi with Ian MacKaye. It's a pretty cool way of getting a "no" if you have to get turned down.

This is impossible but I'll try...

Elevastion has levitation . KInd of internal glow. Awesome , so I bet Live At the East is even better.

OTM, I might vote for either of these.

Or Tauhid or Izipho Zam (Sonny Sharrock's guitar gives these two almost a garage rock flavor).

OR Summun Bukmun Umyun ("Let Us Go Into the House Of the Lord" = his most beautiful tune?) or Pharoah (smooth late-70s sonics tempered by low-fi production, maybe his most unique)

is that common where an artist won't want to participate in a story you're doing, but they'll basically hang out and chat for a while on the phone as they get that across?

No, because most of the time the whole thing has been adequately set up in advance by the publicist or the record label or the artist's manager or somebody. In this case, he didn't have any kind of team behind him, but I knew another artist who had worked with him, so I asked him to serve as go-between, which he did, giving me Pharoah's home number and telling him that I would be calling at the appointed day and time, but Pharoah just wasn't into it, so he gave me the gentle brush-off.

Went for Tauhid but I like all the ones I've heard

I've heard all the Impulse records (except Live at the East), plus the ESP and Message From Home. Tauhid was the first one I heard, after reading that the Stooges borrowed the bassline for "Little Doll" from "Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt". I love the way that piece develops from sparse, empty spaces into commotion and then harmony, it's evocative of ancient cities. Village of the Pharoahs is underrated, with a side-long re-write of Coltrane's "Olé" and some beautiful ballads on the other side.

Bill Laswell's mix-and-match production style seems to be out of favour these days, but I found Message From Home satisfying throughout, never trying to hard to either be retro or in fashion. This is the most atypical song on the record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wOSPn6y77M

I own 19 of these. These days the India Navigation LP is my fave, but it's pretty new to me. I am voting Karma because it's great.

I went with Live at the East, even though this feels like the kind of poll that could really depend on the day. I stumbled into that one without having heard it and feel like it's a pretty cross section of where he was at..."Healing Song" has maybe my favorite motif/bass line and the pace of it feels just right...and "Memories of J.W. Coltrane" feels like maybe the most meditative drone he recorded? (Happy to have someone tell me otherwise.) I have most of the late '60s and '70s albums and could never understand why this and Love in Us All didn't get a CD reissue in the U.S. when pretty much everything else did.

I don't know who on here turned me on to the 1977 Pharoah but it gets me good - oh when the harmonium shows up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqXwHgtEM4c

I'm not sure exactly how it lead to this song, which has artwork that mimics the Sanders, but isn't a cover. I guess it's a vibe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1osb30pggJI

i do like that "harvest time" track but never thought the other two tracks were that great. that album is definitely overdue for reissue, though!

something else i definitely agree with: sonny sharrock is the secret weapon on "izipho zam" and "tauhid", his contribution to the usual pharoah sanders "wall of sound" pushes it to another level

Pharoah, the 1977 album, is a real hidden gem. I hadn't listened to it since putting together that Wire piece but I pulled it up last night and the first track really is glorious, and so chilled-out it kind of prefigures the Floating Points collaboration.

Live At The East is incredible. But yeah, that one, Summun Bukmun Umyun, and Love In Us All have always been hard to find on CD in the US. They were reissued last year in Japan though at very cheap prices, and I got them from, I think, Dusty Groove.

I voted for Tauhid, not going to argue it's his best, but it's the one I listened to the most, and I have a lot of nostalgic memories tied to it.

"summun bukmun umyun" has some great percussion jam sections, up there with any of sun ra's "spontaneous simplicity" versions if you like spiritual hat drum circle vibes

Karma is some of the most uplifting music ever made.

Not sure if it’ll get my vote but yeah the 1977 s/t is way up there as a classic for Harvest Time alone

this is some kind of 5-way (at least) tie for me, but I might vote Black Unity as it was my first thought and not many people have mentioned it. Still, any strong feelings start to evaporate if I listen to something else

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I have eight of them but I had not listened to them in quite a while. Thembi is the one I have listened to the most.

This one is worth checking out as it has awesome Idris Muhammad drumming on this record.

Journey to the One (Theresa, 1980)

^^ I just listened to that for the first time, really good

I voted Live at the East on the guy feeling it'd be overlooked. Man, it's good. Glad it's got a few fans on here.

One that's potentially missing from the list is 1981's Beyond a Dream. It's billed as a Pharoah Sanders/Norman Connors album but that might be a weird marketing ploy. Anyway, it's pretty solid as far as '80s stuff goes (and doesn't sound very '80s)

https://www.discogs.com/release/1261926-Pharoah-Sanders-Norman-Connors-Beyond-A-Dream

It also has a misleading soul-jazz kinda cover...

went with Black Unity, god what a record

First thought Thembi but could be Black Unity or Deaf Dumb Blind. What a musician.

Of the collaborations, I'd find it hard to see past Ptah, the El Daoud.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Was playing "Karma," and my teen (who afaict only listens to Taylor Swift) came downstairs and said "I like the music you're playing, it reminds me of winter."

Wow, more than 40 votes - nice! All of you who didn't vote for Trance of the Seven Colors, go listen to it right now — it's on Bandcamp.

Summun Bukmun Umyun - too low! Though, to be fair, there are many amazing entry points.

https://johnmartyn.com/magazines-and-newspapers/johns-karmic-journey/

Thanks. That's fantastic. Starting with the echoplex to get Sanders' sustain, that's wonderful. Lol at "How Heineken"

via the PS FB page:

Announcing Pharoah Sanders' Pharoah & The Harvest Time Project
This photo was taken by Rob Miseur while Pharoah Sanders was on a brief but intense tour during the summer of ’77, and unearthed by the Belgian researcher Lander Lenaerts of Jazztime Europe.
In honor of the long-awaited remastering and re-release of Pharoah’s legendary self-titled record from 1977, and to celebrate Pharoah a year following his passing, Luaka Bop is launching the Harvest Time Project.
Over the course of the next few months, they’ll share the results of extensive research from throughout Europe and North America, sharing insights made by a dedicated research team, and writing by Harmony Holiday, Marcus J. Moore, and Pierre Crépon.
You can find this collected archival material and these stories from Pharoah’s life at his website and link in the bio.

wonderful news!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzNtHHWWvI