OC completists spoiler alert – this is more than another reissue of a chef d'oeuvre from a monumental musician who marked time. This 2CD package places The Shape Of Jazz To Come in the wider context of the artist's work by supplementing it with other sets from his astonishingly fertile late 1950s period: Something Else! and Change Of The Century (as well as ‘Tears Inside’ from Tomorrow Is The Question). It is just incredible to think that this wealth of groundbreaking music was created in such a short space of time, but from the first note of ‘Lonely Woman’ it is clear that Coleman and his accompanists were operating on a higher level of inspiration to many of their peers. Beyond all the valid analysis of what the group was able to achieve in terms of metric flexibility, the sense they could run ahead of, or behind, the beat without losing their way, or the lustrous harmonies drawn from layers of counterpoint, the real magic of the music lies in the quite sentient beauty of the melodies, meaning that the aforesaid track really is a study in solitude, that ‘Peace’ is a prayer for all pacifist warriors, and that ‘Ramblin’’ is about the childlike joy of carefree travelling. Avant-garde all this may be, but it is also a folk art with superior emotional intelligence.