Jazz Articles about John Gilmore

About John Gilmore

Album Review

Sun Ra: Lanquidity (2 x CD Edition)

Read "Lanquidity (2 x CD Edition)" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
February 2, 2022

When it comes to Sun Ra, the elephant in the room--or perhaps the intergalactic space frigate orbiting your sound system--is how many musicians in the band were bombed out on acid during a typical recording session? By all accounts, Ra ran a tight spaceship and drugs, mind expanding or numbing, were strictly off limits. Then again, Frank Zappa was a similarly sober micro-manager, but bandmembers' memoirs have revealed what anyone with ears has suspected for decades: namely that weed and ...

Album Review

Sun Ra Arkestra: Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited

Read "Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
August 11, 2021

Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited presents in their entirety, newly and luminously remastered, the two albums which on release by ESP Disk in 1965 led, if not to actual commercial breakthrough for Sun Ra—who had been recording, obscurely, under his own name since the late 1940s—then at least to a heightened level of visibility for him and his music in the burgeoning transatlantic counterculture. Ra was no more an acid-tripping psych bandleader than was Frank Zappa; both musicians were ...

Album Review

Sun Ra Arkestra: Live In Kalisz 1986

Read "Live In Kalisz 1986" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
May 17, 2020

In December 1986, the Sun Ra Arkestra performed at the 13th International Jazz Piano Festival in Kalisz. The Arkestra was making its first ever appearance in Poland and the historic occasion was duly recorded for posterity. The tapes, however, languished in a basement, unloved and forgotten, until they were unearthed over three decades later. Thanks to vinyl specialists Lanquidity Records, they have been remastered and released--on striking yellow vinyl--for the first time. The sound quality isn't always perfect-- a couple ...

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Album Review

Sun Ra: The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra

Read "The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra" reviewed by Matthew Wuethrich

by Matthew Wuethrich
January 19, 2003

Sun Ra stated that he wanted to create otherworldly emotions on this album. These emotions are “disguised as jazz,” to quote one of Ra’s poems. The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, recorded in 1961, consists of a range of simmering, swinging, riffing tunes full of deft counterpoint. On the surface, these tunes show a rather restrained side of Ra and his Arkestra, yet below that surface lurk some unsettling emotions. Some might mistake those unsettling feelings for detachment, or worse, ...