An all-star, fully improvised soundtrack to an avant-garde film by Canadian filmmaker Michael Snow, this album is a fascinating departure for almost everyone involved. Following a shimmering, one-minute intro by trumpeter Don Cherry and bassist Gary Peacock (playing with a bow), the entire ensemble launches into the first of two 20-plus-minute pieces that have a superficial similarity to “free jazz,” but by dispensing with even the most rudimentary melody, starting virtually from zero, somehow move into the realm of pure sculpted sound.

The core of the group — Ayler, Peacock, and Murray — is the same as on Spiritual Unity, but the addition of Cherry, second saxophonist John Tchicai, and trombonist Roswell Rudd, radically changes the dynamic. Since his time with Ornette Coleman, Cherry’s music was both lighthearted and introspective, never angry or aggressive. Rudd, for his part, was a raucous entertainer, his trombone lines swooping and bulging with energy. When either one of them takes the spotlight, the music shifts into a less intense, more purely pleasurable zone, like walking out of a New York alley and feeling the sun hit your face. Because the movie itself is so abstract, there’s no need to worry about listening to the album without seeing it; the music exists on its own, beautiful and endlessly fascinating.