Sun Ra ambles between vigorous hard bop, ambitious, adventurous free jazz, and African and Afro-Latin material on the 15 selections featured on this set of '50s and early '60s tracks. The first half was recorded in 1956 and 1960 and includes originals from Ronnie Boykins and Julian Priester, plus futuristic organ from Ra on "Music From the World Tomorrow" and hard-blowing solos from John Gilmore and Marshall Allen. The second half consists of rehearsal tapes from 1960 with The Arkestra    [ read more ]

CD $16.13

CD $16.13

Featuring the Astro Infinity Arkestra, Atlantis reveals two very distinct sides of Sun Ra's music. The first consists of shorter works Ra presumably constructed for presentation on the Hohner clavinet. Not only is the electric keyboard dominantly featured, but also it presumably offered Ra somewhat of a novelty as it had only been on the market for less than a year. The second side consists of the epic 21-minute title track and features an additional seven-man augmentation to the brass/woodwi   [ read more ]

CD $16.13

Released in the early '90s, Concert for the Comet Kohoutek captures a typically inspired night by Sun Ra & the Intergalactic Space Research Arkestra. Recorded in late 1973, on this date the Arkestra were guided by a musical theme composed around the idea of the Comet Kohoutek, which was passing close to Earth at the time. Typically, the release vaults between cosmic vocal songs that speak of Truth and other such brashly capitalized affairs (such as "Astro Black"), almost straight-ahead {\big-ban   [ read more ]

CD $16.13

Continuation is an interesting late-'60s date with a nice mixture of styles. "Biosphere Blues" is a great slow blues with room for a number of solos, but anchored by the phenomenal playing of Ronnie Boykins. "Intergalaxtic Research" has some creepy space voice over a plodding beat which is joined by creepy organ, and "New Primitive Earth" is a weird flute/bells/koto experiment. "New Planet" is very cool space-exotica with Bugs Hunter (presumably) adding enormous washes of reverb a   [ read more ]

CD $16.10

There has always been some controversy revolving around Sun Ra, but few of his albums ever generated more discussion than Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy, which covers half the 12 numbers on this two-LP, single-disc outing. Ra played "astro space organ," and the array of swirling tones, funky licks and smashing rhythms, aided and abetted by John Gilmore on bass clarinet, Marshall Allen on oboe, and arrangements that sometimes had multiple horns dueling in the upper register and other times pi   [ read more ]

CD $16.13

VINYL FORMAT. Exact repro reissue on 180 gram vinyl. Originally released IN 1977. "Cosmos is Sun Ra's philosophy embedded in plastic, courtesy of Inner City Records. It is an unprecedented look at the inner and outer worlds of sound; a magic mixture of the exotic and the mundane, the supernatural and the material, the solar wind beating against the rings of Saturn and the gentle spring breeze blowing a nearby oak tree. If nothing else, it is a voyage. To the stars. To the cosmos. To the edge of the u   [ read more ]

LP $14.99

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A hard-to-find, alternately chaotic and tightly organized mid-'70s session that was issued on the Cobra, and then Inner City labels. Sun Ra provided some stunning moments on the Rocksichord, while leading The Arkestra through stomping full-band cuts of atmospheric or alternately hard bop compositions, peeling off various saxophonists for skittering, screaming, at times spacey dialogues. ~ Ron Wynn/Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide

CD $24.68

Recorded late in Sun Ra's life in concert, this version of the Arkestra was a good one, but far from the band who could make worlds quake in its presence. Featuring Michael Ray, Marshall Allen, Buster Smith, Ahmed Abdullah, Bruce Edwards, and a few others, these 11 men took the music to the people with the usual impeccable arrangements, but without the improvisational fire that was indicative of Ra's band at its zenith. The program of ten tracks, about an hour in length, features wel   [ read more ]

CD $15.18

Fate in a Pleasant Mood/When Sun Comes Out is a pairing of two early-'60s Saturn LPs that catch the Arkestra in an interesting transitional phase. Fate in a Pleasant Mood is one of the final recordings from the Chicago phase, while When Sun Comes Out is one of the first recordings made after the band relocated to New York. The Chicago period had Ra forging a personal sound using elements of swing and bop, with stellar horn arrangements and propulsive timpani drums. By the time they s   [ read more ]

CD $16.13

If you already own the original El Saturn label LP by Sun Ra bearing this title, you will still desire a copy of this item from ESP-Disk for several reasons. It does in fact contain the initially issued live recordings Ra did featuring Black Harold Murray and Pharoah Sanders, but also includes 45 minutes of previously unreleased music, and is accurately annotated with the full and correct personnel listing, plus updated liner notes by Russ Musto. In addition, it states this recording of   [ read more ]

CD $16.13

Live performance in Europe from 1991. ~ Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide

CD $18.03