I can’t help but think of “21st Century Schizoid Man” when hearing “Atlantic Ones,” Metaphysics’ opening track. Tenor saxophonist Odeon Pope elbows across the rhythm while reaching for the unreachable. Composer and session leader Hasaan Ibn Ali keeps time on piano—when he isn’t busily resetting the clock an hour ahead. Robert Fripp must have drawn inspiration from similar music.
Metaphysics is a classic tale of a lost album, recorded in 1965 (as jazz took off for possible new worlds) but unreleased until now. Ali began as a boogie-woogie pianist in 1950s Philadelphia but became part of John Coltrane’s cohort. Coltrane-like sheets of sound is a good layman’s description of Ali’s music, which was championed at the time by jazz’s most forward players and yet—the pianist’s eccentricities were too much for many of them. When Ali was busted for narcotics possession after the session, Atlantic Records decided to shelve it. The master tapes were legendary—and legendarily destroyed in the Atlantic warehouse fire of 1978. But recently, someone found a copy of the master.
Personal tragedy is also part of the story. After his arrest, Ali retreated to his parents’ house where he continued to compose until the house burned in 1972 and with it, his portfolio. He suffered a stroke and lingered on, disabled, until 1981.
But the twisting harmonics of Metaphysics, belatedly released after nearly 60 years, should earn him mention among the jazz pioneers of the ‘60s. The album covers a good deal of ground. “Viceroy” sounds like Count Basie run through a storm of sonic shrapnel. And with its echoes of boogie and blues reshaped along unfamiliar lines, “El Hassan” suggests—at least to me—the flight plan of Captain Beefheart.
