Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages (1991), 5/10

It can be difficult to pull off electric guitar in jazz, with major exceptions being Miles’ Bitches Brew and secondarily this record. Guitar can be misused very easily and result in a mismatching of sound without very intentional arrangement, such as its perfectly placed utilization in the opener of Ask the Ages in “Promises Kept”, a wildly dynamic track that covers an impressive breadth of material in under ten minutes and uses every nuance of its driving sound to great effect. Because the composer himself contributes the guitar playing, it feels natural and fluid rather than forced or contrived. That said, tracks that rely on this development rather than use it to push them over the top do in fact feel forced, such as the proceeding “Who Does She Hope to Be?” that sounds almost like a cheesy nineties ballad. Fusion can be polarizing and hard to love, and the same goes for the majority of Ask the Ages. We are consistently hoping to a return to form of the near perfect opening track, but it unfortunately never comes. There are inspired moments, but they never coalesce to anything very significant beyond a moderately novel fusion sound with great improv chops thrown together and some pleasant use of distortion, which is expected from a jazz and creative giant such as Sharrock accompanied by another creative force such as Pharoah Sanders. There is a lack of truly original songwriting that makes most of the album generally forgettable, as the band’s massive sound is on point for its entire duration, producing an impressively imposing wall of noise in moments. It is a fun experiment with some truly moving sections such as the second passage of “Many Mansions”, but ultimately not among the most groundbreaking jazz albums for its lack of consistency.