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Sun Ra: Ten Great AfroFuturist Albums
by Chris May
With one hundred and twenty five albums to his name, not including reissues, any attempt to compile a Sun Ra Top Ten is a pretty ludicrous endeavour. There is simply too much great music from which to choose and way too much to put to one side. So the honour roll which follows should be regarded not as The Sun Ra Top Ten but one of several. One thing that is indisputable, however, is that each of ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra: Lanquidity (2 x CD Edition)
by Chris May
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 ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra: Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited
by Chris May
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 ...
Continue ReadingSize Matters: (Mostly New) Jazz for Big Bands and Orchestras, Part 1
by Ludovico Granvassu
More is not always necessarily better, especially in music. However, the proliferation of remarkable jazz big bands and orchestras of the last decade or so is providing plenty of material to prove that quality and quantity can go hand-in-hand. This week we focus on recent releases by some of the most compelling large ensembles around, the exception-to-the-rule being a few older albums that fit with the forward-looking tenor of this music. Happy listening! PlaylistBen Allison Mondo ...
Continue ReadingSinatra In Vegas With Sun Ra Discovery
by Arthur R George
Atomic! Sun Ra and Frank Sinatra at The Sands, a previously unknown 1966 recording of the Intergalactic Navigator onstage with The Chairman of the Board, was released today in a joint venture by Blue Note and Mobile Fidelity. “We didn't know if it was real when we first found these recordings. Had we been had? Or did we have what we thought we had? Was it really what it was?," Don Was, president of Blue Note, wondered about his first ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra: Live In Kalisz 1986
by Ian Patterson
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 ...
Continue ReadingSpace Is The Place: The Lives And Times Of Sun Ra
by Ian Patterson
Space Is The Place: The Lives And Times Of Sun Ra John F. Szwed 512 Pages ISBN: 978-1-4780-0841-5 Duke University Press 2020 Of all the 20th century jazz figures, perhaps only John Coltrane and Miles Davis have achieved greater cult status than Sun Ra. Unlike Coltrane, Ra lived into old age. And unlike both Coltrane and Davis, Ra is not usually credited with pioneering or leading new directions in jazz. Ra's fame had ...
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