Sun Ship

Sun Ship is a jazz album recorded on August 26, 1965, by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. The album extended the free jazz ideas of Transition. The relaxed, serene feel of earlier ballads like "Welcome" was transformed into a new style of ballad on "Dearly Beloved" and "Attaining". This style involved very slow tempos, drum rolls and fills, and a louder, more intense feel than traditional jazz ballads. Like "Psalm" (from A Love Supreme), there is no real tune, just a scale or series of tones used to build an improvised theme. Coltrane's solos on the other tracks are also more extreme than on his earlier albums, and are reminiscent of the style of Albert Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders in their extensive use of altissimo and multiphonics. The title "Sun Ship" may have been inspired by Sun Ra's conception of free jazz as having an affinity with science fiction conceptions of human existence.

Sun Ship was one of the only albums John Coltrane's quartet recorded without sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder. It was also one of the last albums (with First Meditations, recorded a week later) which John Coltrane recorded before he began experimenting with larger groups. Tenor saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders was playing regularly with the band by September, 1965, and both McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones left the band in January, 1966.