Pat Martino - Baiyina LP

Label: Real Gone

Orange vinyl edition.

The subtitle to this 1968 album reads "a psychedelic excursion through the magical mysteries of the Koran," and if that doesn't set your multi-culti heart a-flutter, it should at least make you reach for a set of headphones. The late Pat Martino's Baiyina measures up to and perhaps even surpasses John McLaughlin's more celebrated Eastern-facing explorations, employing droning sitars, hypnotically tapping tabla, unusual time signatures, and a crack band (featuring bassist Richard Davis, drummer Charlie Persip, and, making his recording debut, Gregory Herbert on alto sax and flute) to craft a jazz guitar-forward answer to Coltrane and Ravi Shankar (and presages Miles' In a Silent Way with its quietly pulsing improvisational probes). This is the first time Baiyina has been reissued in 30 years.