John Coltrane's "Interstellar Space"

January 19, 2025 7:06 AM

"As one of Coltrane's final recordings this duet session with Ali is one of his most essential and unique. … Coltrane had engaged in earlier duets with Elvin Jones… but in Ali he found a drummer even more willing to abandon terrestrial rhythmic boundaries and set course for uncharted space. Across these duets the saxophonist is at his most visceral exuding an overpowering confidence tempered at times with sacrosanct tenderness. Ali's interlocking pan-rhythmic patterns envelop and embrace while fervently pushing the music forward." - Derek Taylor

Adam Shatz:

Interstellar Space is one of the albums that detractors of “late Coltrane” invariably cite as evidence of his creative disintegration. They hear his playing on it as harsh, turbulent, even violent, and they’re not entirely wrong. For all its intensity, the music of the “classic quartet” … is based on well-proportioned and harmonious group interplay, saturated with blues feeling, pulsing with modal grooves: the essence of jazz. Only a few years later, Coltrane stripped his music of these anchors in pursuit of something more elusive: the essence of instrumental sound. His torrential improvisations on Interstellar Space, like Beethoven’s late quartets, are a reminder that, as Edward Said observed, “artistic lateness” sometimes manifests itself “not as harmony and resolution but as intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction.”

Bill Shoemaker:

… the late period is generally treated as if it’s the last word on Trane, even though it wasn’t intended to be. It is an irony that still distorts the discussion of his music as a whole, and the late period in particular. … It’s not wistful thinking or facile speculation to suggest that had Coltrane lived even one more year, approximately the time span between A Love Supreme and Meditations, the present stock early-middle-and-late period approach to Coltrane would have been rendered moot by a sudden veering of his creativity.

posted by Lemkin (5 comments total)

A masterpiece from the master.

Nels Cline & Gregg Bendian's Interstellar Space Revisited is an amazing tribute as well.
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:33 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]

invariably cite as evidence of his creative disintegration.

It's worth remembering here that Coltrane died at 40 - as Shoemaker says, he unquestionably had more music in him, and I find these kind of jazz people exasperating, the kind that tend to dismiss anything that isn't the bebop equivalent of a Civil War reinactment.

These same people are often demanding that jazz be recognized as an art form - well FFS, give players some room to experiment, to go way too far, to fail, to circle back and try again, to learn by doing together. "Good vibrations and no expectations" as someone once described the starting point of improvised music.

For the record, I don't think IS goes too far or is a failure - Coltrane and Ali are both on fire, and it's a bracing listen even now.
posted by reedbird_hill at 3:57 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

he unquestionably had more music in him

Though it's hard to imagine where Coltrane could have gone next. World music, perhaps.

I'm glad we didn't have to see him playing "My Favorite Things" at every gig for the rest of his life.
posted by Lemkin at 4:20 PM on January 19

Only a few years later, Coltrane stripped his music of these anchors in pursuit of something more elusive: the essence of instrumental sound.

I'm not sure instrumental sound has an essence.

I think improvisation does. I think the essence of improvisation lies in players sharing the experience of locking right into the now, refusing to come out, and giving zero fucks about what anybody other than the participants thinks about it until the moment collapses and everybody stops.

Interstellar Space, to me, reads like a pair of astonishing players doing exactly that, climbing a dizzying rock face of now in the manner of Alex Honnold, without any of the customary scaffolding and safety harnesses of groove. And if I just open my ears and open my self to locking right into the now as those recordings play, then I get snatches - brief, but oh so satisfying - where I find myself feeling like I too am sharing exactly what was going on between them at the time.

And just those snatches, brief though they may be, are absolutely exhilarating. I feel really sorry for people who find themselves offended by the way these master players show no interest in dumbing themselves down to keep an audience comfortable as they explore the very edges of attention.

creative disintegration

If people don't like this kind of music that's perfectly OK - it's just not for them. But any critic who tries to unruffle their own feathers by dunking on players who dare to push themselves right to the limits of shareable experience in this way is pointing out nobody's bare and pimply arse but their own.
posted by flabdablet at 8:00 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

BTW: is there a free version of the Adam Shatz article? Didn't find it on the Internet Archive, and it's behind a subscription wall.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:38 PM on January 20