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.
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