condition (record/cover): EX (minimal surface noise in quiet parts) / EX- (minimal wear)

Recorded in January 1970 in the basement studio of the Coltrane house in Dix Hills, Long Island, which explains a great deal about how this record feels. Alice Coltrane put Joe Henderson and Pharoah Sanders in the same room, gave them both alto flutes as well as tenors, and set Ron Carter and Ben Riley to work underneath, and the result moves between two poles: the hammering modal drive of the title track and "Mantra", and the extraordinary stillness of "Turiya And Ramakrishna", a piano trio blues so slow and so patient it stops time. Her harp playing on "Blue Nile" turns the whole session sideways. Devotional music that never once sounds pious.

Original Impulse! pressing, gatefold. Sampled, canonised and reissued endlessly since, and still nothing else sounds quite like it.