For the last six months of his life, before he succumbed to liver cancer in July 1967, John Coltrane made cathartic music of rare incandescence, documented on posthumous albums such as Interstellar Space, Stellar Regions and Expression. We don’t know if he knew he was doomed, but listening to him today, one gets the impression that in his unbridled quest for transcendence, he was trying to escape from his body to become a pure spirit. It is to this John Coltrane that post-Hendrixian guitarist and ex-Scorch Trio member Raoul Björkenheim pays homage, with covers of five pieces from this period and two others, Solar Winds and Volition, inspired by it. He’s surrounded himself with three solid Italian musicians – Silvia Bolognesi on double bass, Tiziano Tononi on drums and Emanuele Parrini on violin — with whom he engages in stunning dialogues that spiral through the space like incantations, reminiscent of the heyday of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
