Interstellar Space, John Coltrane’s duet album with Rashied Ali, seems the clearest inspiration for Chicago saxophonist Isaiah Collier and drummer Michael Shekwoaga Ode. Collier says he came to Coltrane via Pharoah Sanders, and you can hear the influence of both in his tone and style. At age 23, Collier plays with a voice that feels fully formed. He is as comfortable with long lyrical phrases as the growl and shriek of the outer edges. In Ode, he has a partner who rivals Ali in both power and invention, who understands that rhythm is basic but never steady. He ranges across his kit with a lurching, stop start energy. Massive swathes of snare and cymbals here, thumping toms and kick drum here, breaking against the cliffs of traditional structure with cyclonic intensity.
Ode’s playing on “The Vessel Speaks,” for instance, is a heady concoction of battering rhythm and musicality. He matches Collier as he moves through the registers mixing glissando and overblowing with motifs that evoke New Orleans street parades and New York lofts.
On the preacher thump and yowl of “Omniscient (Mycelium),” Collier punctuates his flow with low growls of affirmation and exhortation. He pushes himself and his instrument ever further, the notes and overtones surging out as Ode crashes around his kit beneath a constant static of cymbals. On “Hymn: Love Beyond Compare,” the duo show their lyrical side. Collier breathes a prayer through his saxophone; a distant thunder rumbles as the shackles fall and the prayer ascends with a tonal clarity of tone not heard in the foregoing maelstrom. As a distillation of A Love Supreme, it would be fine, but there is a candor to the faith expressed that elevates this beyond homage.
In loosening the bounds of traditional harmonic structure, free jazz players sought transcendence, a connection to the divinity of an authentic self. Collier and Ode understand the form’s power stems from roots in the historic vernacular of field hollers, church call and response, blues narratives, and the dissonance of urbanization which flow through Black American music. So yes, Sanders, Shepp, Ayler and Coltrane inspire them, as do Graves, Murray, Elvin Jones and Ali but Beyond is the expression of Collier and Ode rather than exegesis or excavation.
