seraphic

“Corazón a Medio Día” begins with the safety of a sweet accordion line, but there are some Pink Floyd-like electric guitars buried in the song’s seraphic outro.

And the closed-eyes, seraphic expression on her face.

Then Jack White’s Third Man Records reissued the 11 rare LPs Bertoia had recorded in the barn — recursive chimes that linger like church bells, powerful drones that roar like doom metal, tapped gongs that sing like seraphic choirs.

The scholar Julian Horton has argued that, from its uneasy opening harmonies to its concluding passacaglia, seraphic at the last, its rarefied blend of archaic modes and modern tonalities created “a new musical order,” a way out of a musical and civilization collapse.

Here’s Johnny Hodges, delivering four minutes of the most seraphic alto saxophone playing to be found on record, on this chestnut from Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Far East Suite.”