Music Arcades: Albert Ayler: Music is the Healing Force of the Universe

Here's one I forgot I had. I see I bought it just a few weeks after I got the Holy Ghost boxed set. It wasn't that I was so knocked out by that collection (I suspect I'd listened to barely a quarter of it) that I had to have more. No, it was that I saw this for a fiver from Fopp. Again.

If I'd had Google Goggles to check out what I was buying before I bought it, would I have bought less, more or just wiser? Less scattergun and less interesting?

There are at least two points where the evidence of my ears alone would have led me to different conclusions from what Google Goggles might have told me (if it did albums, which I don't think it does, yet). First, I'd have said the album was sure to have been from 1972 or '73, a contemporary of Space is the Place, The Elements, Journey to Love or Sextant — but it was recorded in 1969 and released in '69 or '70, depending on who you believe online.

Then, there's the assertion on Wikipedia that "the music on this album reflects [Ayler's] tortured mental state", backed by the allmusic review that reads the album as a foretelling of Ayler's supposed suicide in 1970, wherein the singer (Ayler's girlfriend) "sounds as if she is pleading and reasoning not just universally, but directly with Ayler, trying to convince him of the positive aspects of life". Now the historical record (pun not intended) may lead an informed listener to that interpretation, but I listened before I knew any of theat and heard something much more in keeping with the affirmation of the album's title.