Pharoah Sanders - Karma (2022 Impulse! Acoustic Sounds Series 180g Gatefold Vinyl LP)

Pharoah Sanders - Karma | Vinyl LP - 2022 Impulse! Acoustic Sounds Series Reissue (B0035572-01, mastered by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, pressed at QRP)

• Sanders’ most celebrated album, recorded at RCA in New York in February 1969 and produced by Bob Thiele for Impulse!, built around the 32-minute “The Creator Has a Master Plan”, co-written with vocalist Leon Thomas.
• Leon Thomas, Julius Watkins, James Spaulding and Lonnie Liston Smith, with Reggie Workman and Richard Davis both on bass and Billy Hart on drums. Ron Carter and Freddie Waits take over for “Colors”.
• Verve Acoustic Sounds Series, all-analogue: mastered from the original tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, 180g vinyl pressed at Quality Record Pressings, Stoughton old-style tip-on gatefold.

Pharoah Sanders spent the last two years of John Coltrane’s life in his band, and Karma is where he answered with something of his own. Recorded at RCA in New York over two days in February 1969, it is essentially one piece: “The Creator Has a Master Plan”, co-written with Leon Thomas and running about 32 minutes across both sides. Sanders opens with a prelude over a backdrop that has no fixed pulse, a nod to the start of A Love Supreme. Then the bass figure arrives, with Reggie Workman and Richard Davis working the same groove, and Thomas brings in the chant: a simple, mantra-like melody over a loping pulse, threaded with his trademark yodel. Julius Watkins’ French horn and James Spaulding’s flute add colours you rarely hear in a band this loose. The third section is where it breaks open. Sanders overblows, splits the reed and stacks up multiphonics until the tenor screeches. “Colors”, with Ron Carter and Freddie Waits, is the epilogue: under six minutes of Thomas singing over a band in no hurry at all.

For a record with a 32-minute centrepiece and a long stretch of overblown tenor, Karma travelled a surprisingly long way. It picked up FM radio play, and the groove has since been sampled and covered across acid jazz and hip hop. The Gun Club released a version of the title track in 1984. It is still the album most people mean when they say Pharoah Sanders. Lonnie Liston Smith, credited here as Lonnie L. Smith Jr., would still be at the piano on Thembi before leading the Cosmic Echoes. This Verve Acoustic Sounds Series edition arrived in December 2022, three months after Sanders died. Ryan K. Smith mastered it at Sterling Sound from the original analogue tapes, Quality Record Pressings pressed it on 180g vinyl, and Stoughton Printing made the old-style tip-on gatefold. This is the 2022 Impulse! Acoustic Sounds Series reissue, catalogue number B0035572-01.