Biggest Tip! 180 gram Vinyl Edition. Gatefold Cover. From his emergence on the New York scene during the early 1960s, until his passing in 2022, the saxophonist and composer, Pharoah Sanders, remained one of the driving forces in jazz. Known for his great breaking style of playing that helped lay the groundwork for spiritual jazz - a particular movement of free jazz, infusing lyricism and melody with overblown, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques - during the same period that he was working with John Coltrane, and then Alice Coltrane, Sanders embarked upon his own career as a band leader, producing a suite of albums across the 1960s and '70s for ESP, Impulse, Strata-East, and others , that remain some of the most celebrated, enduring, and sought-after of in the canon of jazz. They are a marvel beyond words and stand entirely on their own. From their first sounding, there is no mistaking them for anything but Pharoah’s music. Now, Elemental Music returns with the first ever vinyl reissue of the saxophonist towering 1973 LP “Village of the Pharoahs”. Arguably the greatest and most creatively ambitious of the legendary suite of nine LPs that he made for Impulse between 1967 and 1974, across the album’s two sides unfolds some of Sander’s most radical music ever laid to tape: a bristling hybrid of modal spiritual jazz and driving free improvisation that draws upon the deepest wells of emotion and creativity that we can call to mind. Still feeling groundbreaking more than a half-century on, Elemental Music has delivered an absolutely stunning 180 gram vinyl edition, housed in a gatefold cover, immaculately reproducing the original, offering this timeless classic all of the love and care that it rightfully deserves. Unquestionably one of the most important reissues we’re likely to encounter this year, this one can’t be missed!

Born Ferrell Lee Sanders in 1940, in Little Rock, Arkansas, Pharoah Sanders showed remarkable musical promise from the earliest age, accompanying church hymns on clarinet as a child before beginning to pursue the saxophone during high-school. Following a brief stint in San Francisco he relocated to New York in 1962. Falling on hard times and often homeless, during this early moment in his career he was taken in by Sun Ra - with whom he played on and off over the years - who housed, clothed, and bestowed the name “Pharoah”. It didn’t take long for Sander’s towering talent to catch the eye of many of New York’s most notable musicians. By 1963 he was playing with Billy Higgins and Don Cherry, and earned the nod from Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane, the later of who would invite him to join his band in 1965, and helping to define the giant’s sound, beginning with “Ascension”, during the last years of his life.

Fascinatingly, despite working and recording with John Coltrane, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, and Alice Coltrane - contributing to some of the most noteworthy avant-garde albums of that period - Sanders was relatively quick to step out as a band leader, intertwining remarkable solo releases with his work as a side-man. As early as 1965, he released his self-titled debut on ESP, beginning a momentum that, by the dawn of the end of the decade, would encounter him truly stepping out on his own. While he continued to work with Alice Coltrane on iconic LPs like “Journey in Satchidananda” and “Ptah, the El Daoud” and occasionally played with Sun Ra, Dave Burrell, Leon Thomas, Idris Muhammad, and a handful of others, the vast majority of recordings that bear his name are driven by his own compositions and work as a leader, notably the nine full-lengths that he produced for Impulse during the '60s and '70s, in addition to “Izipho Zam (My Gifts)” for Strata-East and 1977's “Pharoah” for India Navigation. There’s little question that Sander’s releases for Impulse are not only his most celebrated and creatively groundbreaking, as well as standing among the most iconic in the history of jazz from this period, with the reverence surrounding them only continuing to grow over the decades since their original release. While LPs like “Tauhid”, “Karma”, “Thembi” have often garnered the most attention among this suite, there is one in particular that can remain slightly overlooked, that is arguable the greatest masterpiece of them all: 1973’s “Village of the Pharoahs”.

“Village of the Pharoahs” was recorded between San Francisco, New Jersey, and New York by a killer, rotating ensemble of versatile players: Joe Bonner on piano, flute, percussion, and shakuhachi, Calvin Hill, Cecil McBee, and Stanley Clarke on bass; Lawrence Killian, Kenneth Nash, Jimmy Hopps, Marvin Peterson, and Kylo Kylo on drums and percussion; Arthur Webb on flute, Sedatrius Brown on vocals and various instruments, and Sanders, in a rare shift, playing his standard tenor on only one track and largely dedicating his efforts to the soprano, bells, percussion and vocals. Easily among the most creatively ambitious and sonically blistering of any of Sanders’ releases from the era, the album begins with the throbbing three parts of its title track, collectively clocking in at just under 17 minute. Underplayed by a tambura drone, the piece is heavily rooted in the percussive and rhythmic drive of the ensemble, as Sanders sours across modal lines on saxophone (and sometimes vocals) in a dance with Sedatrius Brown’s largely wordless vocals, the sum total of which must be some of the most engrossing and boundary pushing spiritual jazz ever recorded, before rounding out the first side with the brilliant drone-like piece, “Myth”, which features the bulk of the ensemble in states of chant.

The second side of “Village of the Pharoahs” begins with the etherial spiritual jazz piece “Mansion Worlds”, featuring the majority of the ensemble taking up as the rhythm section while Joe Bonner delivers shimmering lines on piano and Sanders threads himself through it all, before drifting into the balladic and dreamy “Memories of Lee Morgan”. The album’s final piece, “Went Like It Came”, takes a brilliant and unexpected turn, that in many ways nods to Sander’s roots with Sun Ra. Swinging and raucous - taking on elements from classic R&B - it’s one of the those rare piece by the saxophonist that makes you want to tap your foot and dance, while still retaining the heat of free jazz fire.

Truly staggering on every count, “Village of the Pharoahs” is one hell of a journey from its first sounding to the last. Unquestionably one of our favourite Pharoah Sanders records of all time that’s somehow ended up staying out of print on vinyl for decades, Elemental Music's absolutely stunning 180 gram vinyl edition, housed in a gatefold cover, immaculately reproducing the original, does listeners, new and old, a great service, delivering this masterstroke back into the world. It packs a punch like nothing else. Ten out of ten and impossible to recommend enough!