The Magic City

To become a god, you must destroy your own past. But history is no longer so easy to destroy, so perhaps it might be re-invented.

There's little doubt that much significance is bound in Sun Ra's 'Magic City' release from '65, given the reference to Birmingham. There's certainly little neutrality in the title, and the album is probably Sun Ra's most complex and ferocious. Can we wonder whether Sun Ra, then 50, might have looked back at his home town in a strange(r) light? If The Magic City does not describe Birmingham, might it instead describe the echo in Ra's mind that had made him whatever it was he had become?

I'm taking the view here that The Magic City (recorded between Heliocentric Worlds vol. 1 & 2) represents the peak of Ra's creative talent as composer and leader. Of course it is likely that Ra's methods at both were probably highly unorthodox, but The Magic City stands as one of the most challenging pieces of 20th century music; not simply jazz, but across all genres. It is at once clearly informed by modes within modern classical music, electronic, avant-garde, and free-blowing atonal jazz.

The title track, which may be more significant than the other tracks, spans nearly 30 minutes and both begins and ends with an apparent melody on Clavioline. From here, the Solar Arkestra expands, expands, and then expands again to explore pretty much everything within the range of the band. Light atmospheres combining keyboard and reeds. This first segment is utterly alien and sounds like a science fiction soundtrack. Gradually this becomes more and more demanding as the atonal horns come into play with attacks no less aggressive (possibly more so) than Heliocentric Worlds. Percussion comes into play and Ra shifts to piano. Rhythmically this is similar to Cosmic Tones in some ways, but the former is much more approachable.

Obviously across such length there is room for solos, but ultimately the full force of the entire Arkestra comes rolling in, and at this late point in the track, it is like listening to several pieces simultaneously. Lines which might be melody (it is hard to say) progress very quickly, almost as though someone is holding down the fast forward button, and we might say the piece has become 'hyper-dense'.

It winds down (as said before), with a keyboard / piano melody, but then there is a final blast of horns (again, shades of Helocentric Worlds). When all is said and done, this is no less than Kraanerg or Hymnen or other legendary pieces of experimental music. It no more belongs to jazz than any genre and it remains hard to understand where this music (early to mid 60's) came from.

Of the remaining tracks, 'Abstract Eye' and 'Abstract "I"' are both short and feel more like outtakes rather than major works. 'The Shadow World' however is quite the opposite. We have encountered this title before on the ESP 'Featuring Pharaoh Sanders' release, but here we can examine it with 'studio fidelity'...or at least, better fidelity than offered by the previous live recording. With careful listens, one may be surprised to discover that the track is in fact melodic, even if it doesn't sound that way at first. Listen to it casually and you'll hear a lot of low end percussion (perhaps strings) and some occasional outbursts of horns. The track heats up, gets loud for a while, and then it's over. Pretty much what we've come to expect from Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2, but in this case we'd be wrong.

I've been spinning these discs off and on now (magic city, heliocentric worlds 1 & 2) for a few months, and although it may be that I've missed the subtlety elsewhere (not unlikely), I think I've only first started noticing the subtle melody in 'Shadow World' very, very recently. It is at first played by the percussion and what might be strings, and only after the track is been going well over a minute. Because it is being played so low, it is very likely you'll need to turn up the sound to make it out. What sounds purely like rhythm is not just rhythm but is a tiny melodic rift. Of course, this is Sun Ra melody we are talking about here, so it isn't just unusual that it is being played at the lowest possible register, and percussively nonetheless, but also is the sort many may not even call melody.

Since you've waited so long for this blog entry, I'll risk taking a tangent from not just Sun Ra but jazz as a whole and discuss metal. I probably know even less about metal than jazz, but having a friend with great expertise in the genre helped me understand a few things going on in the more difficult areas of metal--in particular, death metal. Like jazz, metal evolved to a point where many fans became alienated because they could no longer find the melody. They didn't know what to listen for. Death Metal for instance tends to use very short riffs, often played very fast, sometimes seemingly more rhythmic in nature than 'melodic', but these still in fact make up the melody. Until you hear these, death metal may just sound like some kids making guttural sounds flailing on their guitars, but once you start to hear the music....

...well, the same is true I think with a lot of Sun Ra. Melodies are often both subtle and bizarre. With 'The Shadow World', we have a melodic track that disguises its own melody. Certainly after 'The Magic City', you may have given up trying to find the melody, but yes, it is there...somewhere.

We are almost out of the woods with the 'heavy' albums. I don't know if that is good or not, since after Strange Strings, we see Sun Ra moving closer and closer to more accessible music, but we're still a decade away from playing on Saturday Night Live, so there's still a lot of strange music to come.

Day 43 Sun Ra -- Featuring Pharaoh Sanders & Black Harold

These posts are starting to become pretty infrequent as we enter some of the more challenging material. 'Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold' (now reissued on ESP with over 40 minutes of extra material) is a satisfactory and occasionally brilliant live performance from December 1964.

The immediate problem with 'live' Sun Ra, is that Ra was live continuously, and I imagine if every sound ever produced by the man and his arkestra were actually recorded, the hours needed to listen to it would see an infant Sun Ra listener through his late teens or even college years. This massive productivity by Sun Ra (or anyone for that matter) demands a curator if not the cruelest of editors. Of course, Sun Ra would have had no notion that so much of his music would at last become widely available, and like a good archivist sought to preserve everything. He certainly couldn't have imagined the efforts of Transparency to make hours and hours of live shows available, many of which are as significant as any of his official records.

So where is this 'immediate problem'? Perhaps it is just in my head, but one thinks of an artist refining their work, issuing at some point a full-blown statement (I think taken together, Heliocentric Worlds is one of these). Every show made on tour need not always have official releases. Without a curator though, there is nothing to distinguish what might have been meant as more definitive statements, and what was just another night's gig.

Hard core Sun Ra fans will likely dismiss this argument and I will side with them on the opportunity afforded by the availability of obscure Sun Ra recordings. The question however is whether EVERY Sun Ra recording should be considered an album?

'Featuring Pharaoh Sanders & Black Harold' is (for the most part) great stuff, and at times a significant step toward Heliocentric Worlds. There's an early version of Shadow World, while Black Harold adds considerable dimension with some killer flute playing on Voice of Pan and Dawn Over Israel. In fact, short of the too-often heard Rocken Number 9 (which is only 4 minutes anyway), everything on the original Saturn recording is quite exceptional.

The additional material is good as well, though 'The Other World'--a 20 minute blowing/percussion jam is a point of contention. Recently I've heard the Slug Saloon sessions released by Transparency, and we see huge blocks of time devoted to noodling; an aspect that Ra either only did in live shows or felt was better left off his records. Not that 'The Other World' is a bad track, but it is, to my ears, far less interesting than Ra's composed work, and it is of course these sorts of tracks that are always the longest!

Having given this album a few spins, I find my interest in the record starting with track 4, the magnificent 'The Now Tomorrow'. It starts gently enough with piano and flute, graduating to strings and reeds, echoing the sort of foreign melodies we've heard on Cosmic Tones. The piece wavers then graduates into a grand Sun Ra piano freakout. At 10 minutes this is a solid composition with a lot of room to fully explore musical possibilities. It's a great intermediate between Cosmic Tones and Heliocentric Worlds. The other new piece here, Discipline 9, is in fact a fat, extended version of We Travel the Spaceways.

The question then remains, is 'Featuring Pharaoh Sanders' just another live album (with live versions of all those songs you've already heard), or is it a critical work in the development of the Sun Ra sound? Is it an important window into what the Arkestra was up to, or is it just more?

I think there's suffient new material here, that and it being a substantial period of development for the Arkestra, that one can only concur with the former, but let's be cautious. The coming glut of live recordings should be caveat enough!

Day 31 Sun Ra - Heliocentric Worlds

I am skipping ahead slightly to 1965, and will return shortly to the magnificent 'featuring Pharaoh Sanders' disc. It is time for Heliocentric Worlds, and to be certain this is a huge undertaking. Not that 1965 is particularly far ahead of things like Coltrane's Ascension, but Heliocentric Worlds is its own work, still mostly unplumbed by other artists. It is certainly one of the Sun Ra greats! For completists, ESP now offers a 'volume 3' which is mostly a outtakes, but is certainly worth discussing.

Volumes 1 & 2 belong to different periods, but their approach to the music is close enough that grouping them together makes sense. In this case, volume 1 is from April while volume 2 is from November. Both discs feature an apparently 'improvised' sound, that was in fact composed by Sun Ra. I imagine there are elements of both; just as King Crimson's Starless period involves composed arrangements that were generated by and large out of improvisation.


Volume 1 is to my ears a little more difficult and less amazing than volume 2, but this should not keep you from hearing it. The tracks are shorter, but no less abstract and abrasive. In philosophy they are similar to Brotzmann's Machine Gun--which is to say there are huge symphonic blasts of dissonance, staggered between introspective moments (mostly low end and primal.) Although the tracks are shorter, it is possible to move from one track to the next with no sense of a break Unlike volume 2 there is no use of electronics, and with the heavy use of low-end instruments, the overall character of the album is a kind of heavy organic beast. It honestly has little parallel anywhere else in jazz or elsewhere.

By Other worlds, the tone seems to shift because of Ra's piano playing, but it is still punctuated by sustained blasts from the band and an overall frantic nature not present on earlier releases. Things finally do break with The Cosmos when the vibe becomes a primary focus--something that will remain true through the rest of the series and provide a gateway for volume 2's dreamy otherness.

If music has another mostly unexplored element, one of textural and tonal quality, where this pallet can be expressed akin to abstract art or the heights of cinematic expression, then it is hard to think of a better choice for exploring these elements of music (so far removed from the world of beat, lyrics and melody) then this pairing of albums. The latter tracks abandoning the 'blasts' of the first half and floating in a more subtle realm of color and mood.

Volume 2 is probably the superior of the two albums, although even having an opinion in this matter is worthless! Both need to be heard. Volume 2 is only 3 tracks, of which the 3rd (Cosmic Chaos) is similar in nature to volume 1 (fantastic!) The album as a whole differs from volume 1 because Ra's electric/electronic keyboard is audible and at times dominates. The other instrumentation is quite similar otherwise. Heavy use of low-end strings and bizarre percussion. In fact, it remains impossible to comment on this percussion as it bares no real parallel to anything else--I even stretched my musical memory to Indonesian Gamelan music, but it doesn't draw parallel to much of anything I know from non-western, traditional musics. Ultimately this is Sun Ra music and makes no concessions.

The first track, The Sun Myth, clocks in at 18 minutes and is dominated mostly by string and haunting keyboard, but the work is shifting and dense, so most descriptions will fall short. This is IMO one of the best works among the heliocentric worlds, utilizing at times near silence and a very large arkestra to explore just about all there is to explore.

Regardless, House of Beauty still floors me. After so many minutes of challenging music, somewhere in its short running time, Ra gives up and starts playing a bit of jazz, but its a strange, distorted view into some other world. The vision last only a few seconds and is again obscured. This is not earth, just a momentary dream of earth. Before all is said and done here, the raging red spot storm of Jupiter returns from volume 1, though now Ra's Jazz chops hold the tides in check, half melody, half madness.

Somewhere (I'm not sure where), House of Beauty turns into Cosmic Chaos. It is the coda for volume 1, but now a far superior creature through the strings and foreign percussion (cymbals of some sort, reminding me of Haino's Tenshi No Gijinka.) Ultimately the album ends where volume 1 began with orchestral blasts, and quiet introspective pauses.

I do not think there is even a hint of melody between the two albums. It is an incredible artistic victory and it is also fortunate that while these two are among the most heard Sun Ra recordings, they actually stand among his best; though they aren't representative of his overall output in anyway.

I know I've promised to review volume 3 here, but that's going to have to come on a future evening. It is not so spectacular as volumes 1 & 2 and may not deserve much more than footnote status, though it is certainly a good album. More to come...

Day 23 Sun Ra - Other Planes of There

This is going to be one of those entries that's more about me than about Sun Ra or Other Planes of There (1964.) I already knew well in advance that this album would be something of a stumbling block because I can't say I care for it that much, but on the other hand it is clearly a significant album and one that deserves serious attention. Meanwhile, my already busy week turned into a nightmare as I came down with some horrible flu that had me struggling to keep down food, and barely able to stay up for more than 8 hours at a stretch before feeling utterly exhausted.

Other Planes of there is NOT the album you want as your sick-bed soundtrack, and to be certain, I listened to plenty of other things much more pleasant (a lot of Monk actually) while trying to ignore this whopper! It features one of Ra's first huge numbers (the title track is 22 min), something like a drunken Ascension, but not as good. It's an interesting first take, but I just don't feel the piece as a whole sustains itself. There are some good performances throughout, but not anywhere on par with Gods on Safari from the same year. As a postscript, the first dissonant chord of Other Planes of There is phenomenal, right out of something from Ligeti. I just don't feel the rest of the track lives up to it.

The shorter tracks fare better, perhaps because they are shorter. All the pieces here are entirely acoustic (no electric keyboards, echo effects, etc.) The second track is an interesting piano/percussion duet that is as unworldly/surreal as any later electronic efforts, managing a simultaneous frantic/subdued vibe. The phone starts ringing sometime around four and a half minutes, but someone thankfully takes the phone off the hook.

I rather like the piece Pleasure, which once again has that beautiful, sunken, destroyed thing going on. Music for some place long past midnight when music just starts bending in on itself enough for you to notice it isn't right anymore. Perhaps this is a better soundtrack for my sickness?

Spiral Galaxy is probably the best track here, and at 10 minutes it isn't a lightweight. With a marching-band rythym section, layers of reeds and horns are slowly built upon this driving beat; denser and denser. At last this breaks for individual solos, but still the drums keep pounding away. The prospect of a Sun Ra marching band might seem pretty outlandish, but the possibilities suggesting here are inviting.

My final take isn't the most positive. Are there good tracks on this album? yes, there are. Are there good moments throughout? yes to that as well. In fact there's nothing wrong with this album in anyway other than it just not particularly clicking with me until the latter half, and even then it isn't out and beyond any of Ra's other work from this period. It IS significant because he is experimenting with longer pieces and ever increasing abstractness, but we might find better examples elsewhere. Personally I'd give this one a pass until you've heard the other major works from this period (including the recently reissued 'featuring Pharaoh Sanders' CD on ESP. Then it will no doubt be a good time to hear this album. It isn't the best music for when your suffering from the flu.

Day 18 Sun Ra part 2 - Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy

This was my first Sun Ra purchase, and what an introduction it was! Wikipedia lists the CD coming out in 2000, but my receipt (yes, I still have it!) dates back to 1994. This was a time I both knew little to nothing about jazz and only wanted to hear the most far-out music possible. Cosmic Tones fit that bill, but it's hard to say whether I really understood its significance or not. Certainly Cosmic Tones does not sound like jazz (or anything else), and I dug that, but it would be a long time before I'd appreciate more of what Sun Ra was actually doing.

Cosmic Tones was recorded in 1963, so if it is taking its influence from anywhere, 20th century experimental classical music seems the only contender. I've noted elsewhere that possible connection, but it seems a real option to me that the seed of the idea is within jazz itself which is already playing with abstract in the large. The range afforded by ensembles means that richer clusters of tones and atmospheres could be accomplished. Did Sun Ra need to reach outside of jazz for more influence? Whatever the reason, Ra seemed pretty excited about the possibilities of electric/electronic instruments and effects. The echo effect pioneered on Art Forms returns (it is a strange choice that Evidence placed that album second on the CD) and Sun Ra restricts himself to Astro Space Organ (well, let's just say he doesn't play traditional piano.)

And Otherness starts out in what seems like another 'Egypt Atmosphere' piece, but quickly becomes utterly alien. All-band sustained tone clusters with weird undulations and wailings come to dominate. Around this, Ra and others improvise in half-melody, half-atonalism I remember vividly listening to the progressive rock band Henry Cow at the time and considering the parallel between these kinds of music. And Otherness is very much an arranged piece, but it is new music, with little connection to our musical world.

Thither and Yon once again starts like something off Nubians, but then the echo effect kicks in on the drums. Late in the piece the echo starts effecting everything and in the background there seems to be some weird keyboard playing, but perhaps it is something else. This is total and complete weirdness. Adventure Equation keeps the echo, but in time takes on a strange loping melody. Impossible to describe. I thought it would be easy to write about this album because I've heard it a million times, but its as indescribable as it was back in 94. The melody line here is actually rather catchy.

And then all at once we come to Moon Dance; probably the track this album is most famous for. Moon Dance has a groove in a way you probably wouldn't suspect for Sun Ra. It is not the sheer avant-garde we've heard before, but space-age lounge music a decade in advance. Led by the base-line, Sun Ra dominates on keyboard. I've not much to add about this track other than it being a long time favorite of mine. It's probably the most accessible thing here.

The album closes with the amazing Voice of Space that returns to hither unknown worlds of music as denoted on tracks one, two and three. Echo? yes. Futuristic keyboard? yes. Strange, nearly-atonal improvisation on reeds? Of course. Ra plays a bizarre, nearly random series of pulses on keyboard, which may or may not be melody. At times keyboard and reeds work together to create something beyond unworldly. Something like the fusion of the Forbidden Planet soundtrack and...what? Jazz? I don't know, but there's nothing else like it.

If the past two albums focused on what could be accomplished down the free-blowing route, this one abandons all that (and the direction jazz was going) for something completely different. It is hard to say what influence this recording might have had if it had been heard upon recording, or heard in great numbers upon initial release in 1967. More than likely, it would have been too far ahead, but speculating how artists in various genres might have reacted to Cosmic Tones at the time is definitely worth speculating about.

Day 18 Sun Ra - When Angels Speak of Love

When angels speak of love, this is the whole Rilke 'Every angel is terrifying' sort of angel. And I can't say much about the love.

The opening track (Celestial Fantasy) starts with an isolated screeching reed as black as some Fushitsusha recording. It is accompanied by subtle echo-effected-percussion and some low horns/winds. The next track (The Idea of it All) may at first seem like a jazz standard throwback, but quickly breaks down into a 7+ minute bout of hard blowing atonalism. This is continued on Ecstacy of Being, but with less regard to jazz structure and more piercing moments like Celestial Fantasy. It also clocks in at nearly 10 minutes. No sensation of love yet, unless it's the love of blowin' your mind.

The title track is low key, low end, beautiful and at moments potentially straight, but then the horns start blowing high pitch sustained tones, such that the discrepancy between the two is a work of surrealism.

The centerpiece of the album however is the hard blowing 18 minute Next Stop Mars. It's a harrowing number with the loud, Brotzman like moments, but also highlighted are some of the individual performances (Ra's obsession with using the piano in Cage-like percussive manner; IE more like mallets on steel than for melodic purposes, etc.) This is forward looking stuff, though not out of step with forthcoming albums from the same period.

I will have to go back and listen to some of the other 'out' jazz from this period to gain a sense of perspective. Coleman's 'Free Jazz' album is 61, and this is 63. It's easy to say which is more ferocious and pioneering, but no one heard this album. I wonder who else, if anyone, was coming close to performances this abrasive in the early 60's.

My final take on the album? Well, it is a fantastic one, but it is also challenging with little regard for the listener other than continuing to push them as far as possible. You won't find melodic hooks or even the whole modality thing that Ra seems to be famous for. Whether it is free jazz or not, it is unrooted (IE no improvisation along a scale or chord) screeching and wailing. I dig it, but not at 6:30 in the morning.

Day 16 Sun Ra - When Sun Comes Out

Man, it's getting harder and harder to find time to write about Sun Ra. I've given a lot of time in the last few days to 'When Sun Comes Out' (62) and 'When Angles Speak of Love' (63). There are a couple other oddities from this period, What's New and Invisible Shield. If I can find a way to hear and discuss them I will, but I'm not making any promises.

For today's entry (there may be a second entry later if time permits), I want to get my thoughts out there on 'When Sun Comes Out', an album that never really settles down to any one particular thing.

The first two tracks (Circe, The Nile) are Sun Ra doing his weird Egyptian soundtrack thing, the former having odd female vocals. There's another version of We Travel the Spaceways that turns into a free-blowing piece. This approach continues through the frantic Calling Planet Earth, but is abruptly cut short by the bizarrely out of place Dancing Shadows (a stylistic return to 56.)

The Rainmakers at first seems to continue the retro-50's style, but it's slightly more out tonally. The original final track, When Sun Comes Out, continues right where Rainmakers left off, but comes full circle by transforming into a free blowing number. There's pretty weird use of percussion and the horns rip, but neither this track nor anything on the album (up until this point anyway) is really mind blowing.

Now the evidence CD adds a discovered track from the same period (Dimensions in Time) and this one is truly out! Bongo with echo/delay effect and some weird melodic lines. I don't have a good language to describe this sort of sound, but effectively this is the Cosmic Tones sound, but isn't quite there.

Have now heard the album a good dozen times, I can't argue about the albums strengths, but it certainly is a middling album between the towering transitional efforts of the late 50's, and those albums which are to follow immediately. It is not as satisfying as Secrets of the Sun, though is probably about on par with Art Forms.

My personal take for the non-completest is to avoid this release. Paired with Fate in a Pleasant Mood (so far, the release I have been most bored by), this CD just doesn't show off the Arkestra's talents the way so many of the surrounding albums do. While virtually everything else from this period is quite impressive, this CD has two good, but not spectacular albums. All that said, good does not equal poor. I'm glad I own the CD.

Day 12 Sun Ra - Secrets of the Sun

Recorded in 1962, Secrets of the Sun is probably the album that should be paired with Artforms, and is certainly closest to that album in spirit. I'm suspecting there's a similar relationship between When Sun Comes Out and When Angles Speak of Love, but let's worry about those albums when the times come. Clearly Evidence issued what they could in the most economical/effective way they could manage, and at that time, including Secrets of the Sun was not an option.

In 2009 however, thanks to the Unheard Music Series (Atavistic), we have several previously unavailable releases that are as essential as the ones released by Evidence. I'm still very skeptical about some of the live releases on this series, but Secrets of the Sun is an absolute winner and should be purchased without hesitation.

The overall tone is similar to Artforms, but there's little or no use of the echo effect and the material seems more active and lush (though possibly darker.) Of particular interest are two early (and quite edgy) versions of Friendly Galaxy and Love in Outer Space. There's also odd use of vocal on Solar Differentials.

I'm not sure this album is totally consistent overall. There are parts where Sun Ra charts lonely and alien regions, pressing toward a darker tone than heard on previous albums, while the centerpiece of the album, the 17 min Flight to Mars is a bit brighter and more rambunctious, though no less fantastic!

I have to say once more how much I'm enjoying this transitional material--it's almost gone so I better sing it's praise while I can! Secrets of the Sun hits a lot of ground, succeeding in areas of technique, atmosphere, sophistication and surprisingly a few numbers that really swing. I'm imagining some super-straight jazz folks who couldn't take this album, but I'd think any Coltrane fan could connect the dots and dig it. This is still a GREAT jazz album while still edging out ever more. This is a place I wish Ra could have lingered a little bit longer...

Day 10 Sun Ra - Art forms of Dimensions Tomorrow

Recorded in 61-62, Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow seems to be the first truly avant garde release with only about half of its numbers being recognizably jazz. Even then, the 'jazz' pieces are the wrecked and shattered fuselages of what has come before. The version of Ankh here, for instance, is the most destroyed version of that song to date, both sounding as though it was recorded underwater and with only some ancestral recognition of what the song originally sounded like.

Another piece that seems to be jazz (The Outer Heavens) plays with tonal 'clusters' or clouds, experimenting with non-traditional melodic possibilities. There is significant parallel to 20th century classical and experimental music, which is a theme that runs through the whole album.

The new thing here seems to have been the discovery by 'Bugs' Hunter of an unintentional echo effect that turns the rhythmic numbers into impenetrable and bizarre pieces that only find parallel in experimental electronic works (Xenakis, Barron's Forbidden Planet soundtrack, etc.) They may sound somewhat goofy now, but it is hard to imagine how this would have sounded in context.

The album winds down with two pieces which seem closer to traditional fare (Lights on a Satellite, Kosmos in Blue), but there's a subdued unearthliness to both of them. As before, Ra focuses both on low end and stretching the limits of what qualifies as in-tune. These aren't mind bending songs, but they are good Sun Ra numbers. Lights on a Satellite in particular has a few unusual hooks for a seemingly mellowed-out number; I love seeing the arkestra work just a tiny bit of weirdness into nice, relatively pleasant tunes.

Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow is of course paired with the absolutely essential Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, so there's no question about not purchasing it. Still, there's no way I could have cheated it out of some sort of review since it is the first of the NY albums that really begins to break away (or totally redefine) jazz.

Day 9 Sun Ra part 2 - My collection

This clearly isn't sufficient to get me to the end.

Note: I have NO 80's Sun Ra.

Day 9 Sun Ra - The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra

The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra (1961) or We Are the Future (as it is sometimes known) are both bad titles for this rather enjoyable album. You might think that this was a very forward looking release, kicking off their arrival in NYC, but if anything, it is a last, longing look back at what the Arkestra had been. Like Super Sonic Jazz, this sort of summing up of things works pretty well, but perhaps then another title would be more appropriate. There's nothing on Futuristic Sounds that pushes the boundaries of jazz as far as Angels, Nubians or We Travel the Spaceways, and certainly little to hint at the following release, Artforms for Dimensions Tomorrow.

Those misgivings aside, Futuristic Sounds is a solid release without a weak track. The first three numbers are seemingly more straightforward but share a rather high density in their arrangements with hints of some interesting tonal color (something that develops as the album progresses.) These pieces remind me some of Mingus's more complex compositions--I find this kind of thing rewarding, but I think for Sun Ra it is a bit of a dead end.

By the fourth track (Where is Tomorrow?) things become more interesting. The track features a duet between flute and low end reed (Gilmore on Bass Clarinet...or is it Patrick on baritone sax?) which works to pleasant but still haunting effect (if that's possible.) Things really heat up with tracks 5 and 7 (The Beginning and China Gates) which are very much in the spirit of Nubians and make good use of non-traditional/non-western melodies. The song, China Gates, probably wouldn't find much of an audience today with its goofy vocals, but instrumentally it sounds like one of the Impulse Pharaoh Sanders albums.

This more daring part of the album is signaled to a close by yet another rendition of Ra's beautiful Tapestry From Another Asteroid...I'm probably never going to get tired of this piece, but I don't need it on every album. Of what remains, Jet Flight and Space Jazz Reverie are something of a return to the straighter Ra, but there's subtlety with these songs, a slight unease between the soloists and arkestra, a playfulness with what is melodic. If my ears were more trained I could probably say something about the fantastic modal playing implemented here, but I'm afraid my ears are only self-trained.

Looking Outward (track 10) is definitely one of the highlights here, at times creating drones on the reeds with repeating flute melodies all over a pan-African rhythm section.

Many reviewers and writers have looked for a break between the Sun Ra of the 50's and the 60's, noting that Sun Ra's move to NY seems to have triggered his most outside music, though Futuristic Sounds does not fit that bill, while some of his Chicago albums (already reviewed) are much more daring than this one. Nonetheless, we may look for another division. Up until this point, Ra has been by and large acoustic, and the shift from that to the use of special effects and electronic keyboards will usher in a new sound. Whether there is any causal relationship between any of these factors, it's hard to say. Ra certainly has his fair share of fiercely experimental acoustic albums, but regardless, this is the last of the mostly traditional, acoustic album we will be hearing for some time. Thus, I'm drawing a line in the sand here and will later be posting a quick summing up of this period, making recommendations for essential purchases.

Now we truly are entering the future!

Day 8 Sun Ra - Super Sonic Jazz

Well, Thursday and Friday were a bit too hectic here to post about Sun Ra, but it didn't keep me from giving up some of my attention to Super Sonic Jazz (1956) and The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra (1961). Both are great albums, though I only have time to discuss the former this morning.

I've been debating what the best Sun Ra purchase might be for someone looking for the 'early' and 'straight'. This is effectively a stand off between Sun Song, Sound of Joy and Jazz in Silhouette (I think we can ignore Holiday for Soul Dance and Sound Sun Pleasure as these albums are entirely covers.) Of course, one could argue that between Angels & Demons (half of which comes from 56) and Visits Planet Earth (containing half of Sound of Joy) you may need nothing else from the 'early & straight' roster.

Here enters Super Sonic Jazz, disputing the 'you don't need more' argument, while being a much more satisfying album than the other titles from 56.

Where Super Sonic Jazz works wonders is in the variety department (a theme that will carry over to Futuristic Sounds). While the overview approach does nothing for me on Fate in a Pleasant Mood, here it works to great effect. Featuring pieces which could (and did) appear on other albums from the same period (El is a Sound of Joy, Medicine for a Nightmare), these sit comfortably next to some very forward looking electric piano pieces (India, Advice to Medics). Portrait of the Living Sky and Springtime in Chicago feature a more open and expansive sound with an emphasis on Ra's piano playing. Some of the more traditional upfront jazz pieces are balanced out by the melancholic Sunology I & II. Throughout the album's running time, there is always a sense of balance.

This album definitely succeeds at showcasing the amazing compositions and musical ability of the band and makes a nice send-off for the 50's. We won't hear this sort of thing again from the Arkestra for some time, so it's really been nice to have it kicking around the last couple days. Definitely an easy purchase for those who want a good, representative album from this period.

Day 6 Sun Ra part 2 - Holiday for Soul Dance

Here's a quick one as I'm not quite ready to write my review for Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra. I've also JUST wrapped up all my grading and want to wind down. A review for Futuristic Sounds won't get me there, but Holiday for Soul Dance (1960) is a chill out album if ever there was one.

Unlike the 56 material which pushed that brassy aggressive sound that just never strikes me the right way, this one plays the horns for their cool moods (well, most of the time.) Virtually ever track here is a cover, and they're all straight as hell. This one is just playing beautiful music just for the sake of it, and it's hard to find fault there.

I think it's fair to say I really dig the second side while the first side is just OK. Autumn is a great song (with vocals), while I Love You, Porgy and Body And Soul are nice quiet numbers which show off the bands more subtle qualities. Keep Your Sunny Side Up is a louder swinging number (more like side 1) but is a nice close to the album.

Like Sound Sun Pleasure, this might be an unlikely disc for purchase. It is good music, but none of it is original, and there's nothing to hint at what Ra was really doing at the time. Still, it is amazing to hear that the Arkestra was as good as any band at a time that they were doing some seriously twisted music. When you hear this album there is no question how talented those guys are. I'd recommend Sun Sound Pleasure over this in part because it is better but also because it includes half of Deep Purple, but I could see plenty of Sun Ra fans (like myself) not owning either.

Day 1-3 Sun Ra (yeah, this is lame)

So, being this far in I thought I should at least link the amazon reviews that I wrote during the first three days of my Sun Ra odyssey. I don't think I can directly link the reviews, however:

(look for the reviews by C. Moon)

Sun Song

Sound of Joy

Jazz in Silhouette

Day 6 Sun Ra part 1 Fate in a Pleasant Mood

The new problem with the Sun Ra program is that I can listen to the music much faster than I can write reviews; especially since most of my time listening to music is in the car or while I am grading. As a result, I started getting pretty far ahead of myself, and had to start listening to albums many times over (IE 4-6 times) before I actually had the chance to listen to them. This may not sound like such a bad deal, and in a few cases I've definitely picked up on nuances not immediately evidence. That said, there are times when I simply am not a big fan of an album, but listening again and again still seems like the best option. I hope fans will not hate me for saying that Fate in A pleasant mood (1960) is that album.

What, am I writing my first negative response to an album? Well, yes and no. The bulk of the material here is great stuff, but taken as a whole, the album seems mediocre to me. Transitional music will always face the difficulty of being neither here nor there, but on other recordings, Ra makes good of it--in fact, it may be some of his best music! Fate however just seems to be the album that most of the songs that felt neither particularly inventive nor particularly memorable wound up on. Yeah, someone here isn't in a pleasant mood!

That said, let's discuss what IS good on this album. Space Mates has a dreamy quality--the soundtrack to some lush, exotic paradise. Lights of a Satellite is a throwback to Travel the Spaceways with it's death-march swing and nearly out-of-tune melodies. Kingdom of Thunder is a decent but not remarkable return to Nubians.


As you've noticed, that still leaves half the album. The remaining tracks (including the wonderfully titled Ankhnaton) just don't do much for me, though Distant Stars is at least bewildering (is that a good thing), sounding more like a brassy version of Monk's Hackensack than past or present Sun Ra.

This album is available on an Evidence CD paired up with When Sun Comes Out, which I like more than Fate in a Pleasant Mood, but neither is among the best from this period. I see this one as a fair addition for collectors, but casual fans can do a lot better.

Day 5 Sun Ra - We Travel the Spaceways / Bad and Beautiful

We travel the Spaceways (1956-1960). This album is split up chronologically more than most, so it may be surprising to hear that it is amazingly consistent and forward looking. When Ra and his arkestra threw this album together, they made some awesome decisions in arrangement, though one wonders if the arkestra was working along threads, IE this is our 'straight music' thread, our 'dissonant' thread, our 'throwing jazz structure out the window' thread, etc. If Nubians mostly seems to collect the later category, We Travel the Spaceways seems to collect music from the second category, and it is a brilliant success.

My first impression listening to this album was that Ra had been taking LPs and slowing them down, studying what happened tonally and texturally. In the same way that rock can sound AWESOME when it is slowed down, on We travel the Spaceways, what could be traditional arrangements come out like funeral dirges. Everything is slow and plodding. But there's more.

I've spoken of Ra's 'broken melodies' that perhaps might be compared with the 12 tone thing that appears in the early 20th century with Shoenberg. Other composers followed suit, and I wouldn't call a lot of this music '12 tone' or 'atonal', it's just a lot more dissonant (Milhaud, Shostakovich, Honegger). These folks produce a sort of melody I might call tarnished. It isn't necessarily dark or foreboding, it just not the bright romantic type of melody that permeates most music. This sort of more dissonant sense of melody/harmony shows up in a lot of soundtrack work, so you might find comparisons here.

Well this is the kind of melody Sun Ra has been pushing for in previous albums I've reviewed, but it doesn't really surface in full form until Nubians, and here it really dominates the whole album. There is a certain range of what is possibly melodic, and a line that when crossed passes over into dissonance. I feel that Ra is pushing the arkestra to play right at that boundary without passing over into dissonance.

Ironically, the pieces are are fairly conventional in structure, beyond being played very slow and continuously almost (but not quite) out of key. There are of course the few 'nearly' straight pieces, but like everything else here, there is much more low range instrumentation and all the bright happy brass from the early albums are gone. The normal-ness backfires anyway, working more like Fats Waller in Eraserhead than a pleasant respite from Ra's persevering strangness.

A few highlights for me: Interplanetary Music appears again, but nearly out of key with weird scraping strings. The transformation of this song is pretty incredible. Still, it barely registers when compared to the devastating title track, We Travel the Spaceways. It's a pity this (to my knowledge) never made it into Ra's live roster as it is a fantastic surreal number that is like zombies singing some cosmic mass. Absolutely needs to be heard.

On the same disc is The Bad and the Beautiful (1961). I'm not officially in the 60's, though clearly keeping the order exact is not going to be possible.

It may not be as bold as We travel the Spaceways, but don't write it off just yet. The first thing that may strike you is that as a NY album, this isn't as weird as its contemporaries. Most of the pieces here have a gentle dreamy quality to them, with that beautiful heavy low-end feel that will dominate Sun Ra's albums pretty much from now on.

Ankh (which we've already heard and will heard many times again) is performed with rugged beauty here. I tried listening to what Sun Ra was playing while the horn was wailing away and it barely sounds in tune with anything, but then comes back with the compositions melodic line. This might be my favorite performance of the piece.

There are a few moments in the album that remind me a bit of early-impulse Coltrane, but that doesn't mean there's any connection; just some great horn playing with good use of space and band interplay. You know how it is: good jazz is good jazz.

Exotic Two is another percussion frenzy, but I think Nubians has it beat. The final track (And this is my beloved) is a beautiful and dirge-like piece akin to 'We travel'. Why am I such a sucker for songs like this? I don't think there's a whole album like this track by Ra, but I'd be first in line if there was.

Final thoughts: is this album a commercial attempt, I can't really tell. It's definitely one I dig, even if it isn't doing anything to strange for 1961.

As far as the CD itself--yes, yes and yes. Buy this one for sure along with Angels/Nubians. My two picks for the late 50's material.

PS - I know I've skipped Super Sonic Jazz (which is still in the post). Coming up next should be Holiday for Soul Dance, Fate in a Pleasant Mood/Sun Comes out, and Futuristic Sounds of sun Ra. After that, we'll be nearly done with transitional and well into total weirdness.

Day 4 Sun Ra Part 3 - Angels and Demons

No, you can't escape, neither can I. Yes, I've done productive things with this day, but working on the webpage update for www.lastvisibledog.com entails an hour or so of sitting in front of the computer, and that means another opportunity to listen to music. Is opportunity the right word? Certainly the Evidence CD 'Angels and Demons at Play / Nubians of Plutonia' is fantastic stuff; but fantastic albums require fantastic reviews, and now listening to Sun Ra has become a job. Damn!

Anyway, let's get on with it! There's only 120 more Sun Ra albums after this (or so...) This is a really magnificent CD, one of the best you can purchase from the transitional Sun Ra before he goes down the road of total weirdness. Although, one could argue it's already past the cusp. A few of the tracks here are normal-ish but let's not kid ourselves, Ra's already past the point-of-no-return.

Like 'Visits Planet Earth', we've got material from several different years, and if at any point you're starting to settle back into more comfortable territory, it will be during the second half of 'Angels' which is, amazingly, from 1956. I always wondered why there was so much inconsistency in the album, and here's why. Side A was recorded in 1960 and I wouldn't be surprised to find it the source of inspiration for the Impulse sound that starts on A Love Supreme and ends when Pharoah Sanders starts making easy listening albums. Here's the title track with a great head shot of the man himself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw3Trh10Jr8

Nubians of Plutonia ( originally titled 'Lady with the Golden Stockings' or even 'The Golden Lady') is a little more consistent coming all from one period (58-59). It's a heavy percussive affair, including an extended drum solo on Nubia, though does not have the dense 'polyrthymic' thing (I know I'm overusing the term) that we find on the early tracks of Angels. Certainly the whole album is extremely satisfying, but by side B the thing breaks lose and we can really see how Sun Ra and his Arkestra are willing to take it THE WHOLE WAY. Africa's drumming, low end horns and humming/singing is trying only to make Sun Ra music; jazz itself being only a foundation, a leaping off point. All builds into the frenzy-like Watusa (in shows from the early 70's I've heard Ra use Watusa anthem like to conclude massive improv/freak-out sessions, and the wild energy you hear here was no less in those performances.)

What is striking is what happened to the horns which had been, up until this point, right up front in the mix. Now they are often muted, low and providing harmonic support. In Nubians especially, percussion is everything, and when there is melody, it is broken and unpolished. Whatever accessibility might have been present on the albums prior to this (Sun Song, Jazz in Silhouette, Sound of Joy, etc.), it is absent here. Ra is reaching for something else entirely , and his success at doing this would give us some of the most fiercely experimental albums of the 60's. Good bye big band, hello Stockhausen.



PS - Is 'Nubians from Plutonia' the beginning of the AfroFuturism?

DAY 4 Sun Ra part 2 - Visits Planet Earth / Interstellar Low Ways

Yeah, grabbed some coffee and breakfast at a place called 4 and 20; heh. So, back to Sun Ra.

The Evidence CD Visits Planet Earth / Interstellar Low Ways is a weird collection because it is not exactly two albums, or rather, Visits Planet Earth was never a proper album. With Sound of Joy not yet released, half of the material from that future album was released as the B side of Visits Planet Earth. Here, Evidence reverses the order and those tracks appear as side A (well, as much as you can have a 'side A' on a CD.

The end results, much like the Angels and Demons at Play CD is that you're getting a rather diverse set of material. The three songs of Visits Planet Earth that are originals (or at least original versions) are Planet Earth, Eve and Overtones of China, all from 1958. The accompanying album is Interstellar Low Ways, and comes two years later still (1960); so regardless of whether you find the mix good, there's definitely a bit of range.

Now when I first heard this CD back in the mid 90's, I have to admit that I found it pretty dull; hoping for Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (I could say this about a lot of Ra albums actually, and it would be terribly unfair). Coming back to it now, the CD is a really great one. I've already reviewed Sound of Joy on Amazon, and while I'd rather hear the whole thing than just one side, it's still great material, though easily the most straight. The other material falls squarely into what I'm going to call 'transitional' Sun Ra.

The three tracks from 'Visits' have a lot more space in them than what I want to call the 'Sun Song' sound which permeates Jazz in Silhouette and parts of Sound of Joy. Instead, there's perhaps a hint of the future polyrhythmic experiments that would dominate a lot of Ra's future albums, though Ra writes this sort of thing off as Orientalism in his 'Overtones of China', but don't be fooled; all three tracks are looking for new inroads. There's also a sort of darkness (at times encrouching on 'atonalism' that seems mostly absent from any prior recordings. It's worth pointing out that Eve has some killer Sun Ra piano on it.

Interstellar Low ways, though being recorded two years later is pretty similar in tone to the three 'real' tracks from 'Visits Planet Earth', but the album itself feels a bit of a mess. I like Interplanetary music, but it comes off like a joke track in the middle of some very mesmerizing pieces (for instance, the phenomenal title track.)

Given that this material was recorded at the same time as side A of Angles and Demons at Play, I have to admit a little dissapointment. Well, it just goes to show that Sun Ra was playing in a lot of modes at once. If Low Ways sounds more like a 58 album than a 1960 album, so be it. It is great music, and something I'm sure I'll be wishing for once I'm stuck in the late 60's of my forced Sun Ra Chronological thingy!

Summing this CD up, it's a good overview of Ra's late 50's material, but it isn't the best of said material. Low Ways just isn't an A+ album to my ears (though again, killer title track!), while Visits Planet Earth is hardly an album at all. Still, the three 58 tracks + the gems on Low Ways. Yeah, this is certainly a good one. Still, I don't think it is gonna hold its own next to the two other Evidence CDs I'll be addressing shortly, Angels & Demons at Play / Nubians of Plutonia AND We Travel the Spaceways / Bad and Beautiful.


Sound Sun Pleasure (1958) with side A from Deep Purple (54-56):
This and the other Evidence CD Holiday for Soul Dance constitute the 'straightest' of the Evidence CDs (perhaps I should include the Singles collection in here as well) not so much because of the playing, but rather because for the most part what we have here is Ra playing standards.

I'm not going to take a lot of time reviewing this release because I think in part I'm not qualified. I was not raised loving jazz (something of a tragedy) but grew to love it throughout the 90's. Still, my pedigree in jazz is the obvious Coltrane, Davis, Mingus and Monk making up the backbone with a smattering of other odds and ends. Lots of free jazz. It was with great difficulty that I found myself loving the jazz of the 50's, and at times the 40's are nearly inaccessible to me. So how am I supposed to approach albums like Sound Sun Pleasure? Well, fortunately I found my love of old jazz through cinema, and it's a great way to learn. I think a lot of these songs here have some beautiful atmosphere, and at times they're actually haunting in the way music isn't anymore; but there isn't much here to remind you this is a Sun Ra album (though hear that percussion on 'I could have danced all night!')

Amazingly, Enlightenment has been directly ripped from Jazz in Silhouette and plopped right in the middle of this album. I love the song, but I'm not sure it fits. It's the delicate vocals and other touches that work, while the brassier moments tend to overwhelm things.

The real treat though are the bonus tracks which make up Side A of Deep Purple. Dating from 54-56, they've got a wonderful primitive sound with some Carnival of Souls keyboard playing buried in there.

That said, this disc may be a novelty only for the Sun Ra fan unless their tastes extend back to some relatively early modes of Jazz (I hope to be there some day), but the material is definitely strong, and I've found myself digging the music even if it isn't quite what I was hoping to get out of a Sun Ra album. Take that as a caveat before purchase.

Day 4 Sun Ra part 1 - I need coffee

As of Friday (9/25) casually came to the decision to make an attempt at listening to as much of Sun Ra's catalog in order, as possible. There are two immediate problems with this being that Sun Ra has ~130 official releases (you can check it out here.) Of course, as a compulsive listener, this is a fine challenge, though a few days in, I'm certainly hitting points where three to four albums in a row feel far too similar to want to ever hear them in sequence again.

The second problem comes from not having all 130 albums. A few of them, I'm sure I can safely skip, a few no doubt will have to be lost to obscurity, but I'm sure I will manage to find other means to fill in the remaining gaps--something that simply must be done for the purpose of my Sun Ra self-indoctrination course. Even acknowledging these gaps in my collection, I'm still pretty freaked out by how much Sun Ra I have (about 40 official albums + those transparency lost reels.) My current Sun Ra mania has been aided in particular by Atavistic and Art Yard's recent reissue programs. I'll come to these in time (Night of the Purple Moon, I'm looking at you!)

Anyway, to briefly sum up the current state of affairs, Friday I spun my LP of Sun Song (56), following it on Saturday with Sound of Joy (also 56 I believe). I proceeded to write reviews for both of them on Amazon. On Sunday I listened to Angels and Demons at Play (parts from 56) (I'll discuss it in a later entry) and Jazz in Silhouette (58), the later I also reviewed on Amazon.

That night I listened to 'Visits Planet Earth' (58), which is in reality only three songs. Was rather tired of reviewing everything, and the Evidence CD paired it with Interstellar Low Ways, so why not keep going?

While writing this first entry, I finished up Interstellar Low Ways (60) and will discuss this in my first serious entry after I find some cream for my coffee and figure out where this day is going.

PS also plan on getting back to Super Sonic Jazz, Sound Sun Pleasure and that singles collection. I have not forgotten them.

PPS My plan here isn't to just list the albums I've listened to. I will be discussing each in depth, but seriously man, the coffee is calling me.