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Sun Ra Arkestra: Swirling
by Chris May
Saturn moved into the ascendant in October 2020 when the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen released its first studio album in over twenty years. Swirling presents new arrangements of both well-known and more obscure Ra tunes, played by a fifteen-piece lineup which includes band veterans and relative newcomers. It is a welcome addition to the Arkestra's near seventy-year catalogue. When Ra passed in 1993, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, an on-off band ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra: Seductive Fantasy
by Ian Patterson
It seems entirely fitting that “Seductive Fantasy," the single from the Sun Ra Arkestra's first studio album in twenty years, should be a reworking of an old song, one that dates back over forty years to On Jupiter (El Saturn, 1979). With Sun Ra it was ever thus; old is new and new is old. The original “Seductive Fantasy" was a sprawling, seventeen-minute affair that morphed from loose groove and extended soloing into increasingly abstract, and almost arrhythmic terrain. Significantly ...
Continue ReadingMichael Ray and the Cosmic Krewe: Funk If I Know
by Douglas Payne
If the music and the jacket photos of Funk If I Know are any indication, Michael Ray hopes to ascend to the eccentric charisma of musical showmen/shaman like George Clinton or Sun Ra. In fact, trumpeter Ray (who, in street clothes, looks a lot like Sonny Rollins) is a former member of Ra's Arkestra and was once part of the Kool and the Gang horn section.But Funk If I Know, Ray and his Cosmic Krewe's second disc, offers ...
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