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.