Recently released on double CD in the USA by Verve/Impulse! and now available in a lip-smacking limited edition triple vinyl LP box set, The Complete Sun Ship Session offers a rare and revealing insight into the evolution of the five Coltrane compositions recorded on 26 August 1965 which were eventually released in edited form as Sun Ship on Impulse! in 1971, four years after the saxophonist died in 1967. Coltrane was contracted to Impulse! for two albums a year but such was his sky-rocketing creative trajectory during 1965, coming off the back of the landmark Love Supreme sessions in late 1964, that producer Bob Thiele let him record whenever he was ready. This intense period of inspiration resulted in sessions for nine studio albums tracked during 1965, of which only the John Coltrane Quartet Plays was released that year as he was eager to press on with new ideas. The other recordings, ranging from Ascension to Kule Sé Mama and Meditations, were released during the period 1966-72, most of them posthumously. The Sun Ship sessions were the penultimate studio recordings of the McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones classic quartet before Pharoah Sanders joined the band in September 1965. The music was very much in a key transitional stage moving from the meditative spirituality of Love Supreme towards Coltrane's embrace of the freer sonic challenges of the ‘new thing’, and here featured mainly shorter, repeated themes setting up fiery, often atonal improvisations, particularly the brutal title track. The original 1971 Sun Ship release was produced by Alice Coltrane and Ed Michel and featured edited and spliced versions from different takes of ‘Sun Ship’, ‘Attaining’ and ‘Ascent’, with complete takes of ‘Amen’ and ‘Dearly Beloved’. Now for the first time all the complete, alternate and incomplete takes, breakdowns, false starts, inserts and studio chatter can be heard following the rediscovery of the original session tapes by producer Richard Seidel, who has co-produced this illuminating release with Michael Cuscuna and Harry Weinger. Presented here in the correct recording order, the listener is plunged directly into the hectic activity of the day as ‘Dearly Beloved’ hits a false start before a discussion with Coltrane and Garrison leads to a first take, followed by another take that breaks down, and finally a cracking fourth take that nails it, with Coltrane in soaring melodic form. Each track develops and evolves through similar steps, allowing you to get inside this incandescent music, hear some fascinating unused improvisation and witness the quartet's deep empathy as each performance grows in creativity and intensity. Remixed from the original three track masters the sound improves on the wooly sounding 1971 LP release with greater clarity and detail, and restores the balance of instruments in the stereo spread, occasionally supressed on the original mix. Pressed here on beautiful sounding, 180-gram heavyweight vinyl, the three-disc box set includes an extensive liner note booklet which intriguingly points out that researchers noted the similarity of Coltrane's ‘Sun Ship’ theme to the tuned bongo theme that introduces Sun Ra's ‘Infinity of the Universe’, and suggests that the track may well be a homage to Sun Ra. Time then to board the Sun Ship for an extended voyage of discovery