Alice Coltrane |-Huntington Ashram Monastery / World Galaxy( Impulse Records 2-on-1)(2012)

It is a beautiful, sumptuous album, but the full-on astral experience comes with World Galaxy. This was Coltrane's second outing with strings, following Universal Consciousness(reviewed below). On Universal Consciousness, Coltrane collaborated with Ornette Colemanon the string arrangements. On World Galaxy she went alone, and revealed a style of her own—in ambience part Indian, part Japanese and part Hollywood Western soundtrack. You love it or you loathe it, there seems to be no middle ground. Loathers were, and still are, incensed by the album's closing track, a rearrangement of "Acknowledgement" from John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965). Coltrane's guru, Swami Satchidananda, contributes a spoken introduction and coda, and the arrangement, which includes Coltrane on heavily processed Wurlitzer organ and a violin solo by Leroy Jenkins, is less "jazz" than acid-rock (without the guitars). (Chris May allaboutjazz)