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Illuminations
Carlos Santana was a devotee of Indian guru Sri Chinmoy for a decade, and that spiritual journey was a deep influence on his most abstruse, jazz-fusion-oriented albums, including this 1974 collaboration with Alice Coltrane. Chinmoy even delivers an invocation at the beginning. The music is otherwise entirely instrumental, performed by a group that includes Coltrane on piano, harp, and Wurlitzer electric organ (she also wrote string arrangements, and conducted the players), Jules Broussard on flute and soprano sax, Tom Coster on keyboards, Dave Holland on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Armando Peraza on congas. Santana’s playing is extremely restrained, with almost no shredding of the type heard on contemporaneous albums like Welcome, Love Devotion Surrender, and the live Lotus; he holds long sustained notes often, and leaves plenty of room for the others to create a kind of gently swelling atmosphere that’s ultimately an extremely meditative take on fusion.