Pharoah Sanders Pharoah (Deluxe Edition) 2LP Box Set

TAS Rated 4.5/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the May/June 2024 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Paste Magazine The 20 Best Box Sets of 2023 - Rated 18/20!

With Pharoah Sanders' blessing, Luaka Bop presents the definitive, remastered version of Pharoah, his seminal record from 1977, in an embossed 2LP box set. Alongside the original record, the box set includes two previously unreleased live performances of his masterpiece "Harvest Time" and a 24-page booklet with rarely seen photographs and ephemera, which tell the story of this album and this moment in Pharoah's life in a way that has never been done before - including through interviews with many of the participants and a conversation with Pharoah himself.

For those of you who already know this record, then you know that its origin story is as elusive as Pharoah was about everything Pharoah. It was born out of a misunderstanding between him and the India Navigation producer Bob Cummins, and was recorded when he was at a crossroads in his career with an unlikely crew. Among them was a guitarist who was also a spiritual guru, an organist who would go on to co-write and produce "The Message," and a classically trained pianist - his wife at the time, Bedria Sanders - who played the harmonium despite never having seen one. At times ambient and serene, at others funky and modal, Pharoah radically departed from his earlier work. And it became beloved.

"Last fall, we were working with Pharoah on this project when he unexpectedly passed away. At first, it was hard to know what to do. We loved him, and the reason you do all of this is not solely for the music, but also for the person who made it. It's their personality, their humor, and their wishes that drive you forward. So, we decided to go deep into the research. We set out to create something that showed Pharoah and his music in a new light."

For seasoned listeners and new acolytes both, Pharoah will never sound the same.

The set that they dropped this year is slender but mighty — simply a remastered version of the original album in all its spacey, spiritual glory and a second LP featuring two live versions of the track 'Harvest Time.' But it's through these two discs, and a booklet filled with photos, ephemera and a conversation with Sanders undertaken just before his 2022 passing, that a near complete picture of his musical mindset is unveiled. Working in the studio with an entirely new group of musicians (including future Sugar Hill Gang collaborator Clifton Chase), Sanders bent and folded his playing to fit their psych-funk approach while holding true to his hopes of reaching a kind of breakthrough in consciousness through his horn.

Thanks to Luaka Bop, the oft-pirated title gets its first official re-release with excellent remastering....For most Sanders fans, Pharoah remains a masterpiece, and as such, it finally gets the respect it deserves.

This mad-rare, in-demand, collectible late-'70s indie release by this saxophone legend receives a loving reissue crafted from a surprising source. It sounds — frankly — quite fantastic and lovely. Revelatory.

The concert performances, in which Sanders blows ecstatically in a quartet with bassist Hayes Burnett, drummer Clifford Jarvis, and keyboardist Khalid Moss, sound remarkably good—crisper, even, than the excellently remastered studio tracks. But the latter beguile with their idiosyncratic instrumentation and Sanders' cosmic/spiritual experimentation.