Alice Coltrane’s Ashram Tapes Are Finally Getting Released

The four devotional albums have long been unavailable to the public in any formatAlice Coltrane, Courtesy of Radha BotofasinaAlice Coltrane’s ashram tapes will soon be released via Matador. Turiya Sings, Divine Songs, Infinite Chants, and Glorious Chants were recorded at the late jazz musician’s ashram outside of Los Angeles in the ‘80s and ‘90s, where the cassettes were distributed among members. Matador will debut the tapes—which draw on jazz, new age, gospel, and electronic music—on all formats for the first time, complete with full mixes and artwork. A release date has not yet been announced.Although the complete tapes have never been released to the public, several songs off Divine Songs, Infinite Chants, and Glorious Chants, were featured in 2017’s The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, while Impulse! released an altered version of Turiya Sings without synthesizers in 2021.“ Musically, it’s a pure reflection of the life journey my mother was on at the time,” Michelle Coltrane said in a press statement. “She was seeking, in every, most authentic way, a life of devotion, transcendence, and spiritual elevation. The music was an inspired offering to the sanctity and feeling of this spiritual path.”Read more about Alice Coltrane in Transfiguration and Transcendence: The Music of Alice Coltrane.Kiana Mickles is a staff writer at Pitchfork. They previously worked as the reviews editor at Resident Advisor. They were born and raised in New York. ... Read More