Sun Ra Music

there are a lot of sun ra albums that i love, and a lot of them that i cannot stand. the pretentious avant-garde ones tend to fall into the second category. this one, though avant-garde in nature, is actually very listenable. featuring a lot of fantastic sax work from john gilmore, this is a great place to dip your feet into sun ra's freaky side. the great john coltrane was a huge fan of john gilmore, and it's easy to figure out why. the compostions on this album are 'out there' in nature, but yet easy to reach with your heart. i recommend this to those with a taste for musical adventuring.

A brilliant strange album that is very spacy. This is probably not a album for old school jazz puritans, it's a album for those who want more. Sun Ra looks like his music, that is very wired, in a positive sence. He gives his musicians complete freedoom. You can hear the musicians really enjoing themselves in the way they play. A chaotic album in a chaotic world !

I am a huge fan of Sun Ra, but I don't think this album is as good as his best. There are three long sprawling tracks. It is pretty avant garde stuff and if you like the jazzier Sun Ra, as I do, then this isn't one of the better ones. If you are into avant garde you may enjoy it more than I do.

The music here has a vibe not dissimilar to that on "Lanquidity", another album currently in-print that was recorded late in a New York night during the disco age. And like that album (as well as the hard-to-find "Sleeping Beauty" and "On Jupiter") featuring an Arkestra that had some R&B roots in the ground.

The music is gentle "quiet storm" R&B with washes of sound over the top ... the recording here is clear and crisp. It's gentle groove music and there's a kind of perfection to it.

This was the first Sun Ra album I ever bought and is still my favourite. Not quite as far out as some of his 1960's material and perhaps the most accessible of his truly great works, it features a formidable late-1970's version of the Arkestra on 3 extended tracks, each of which develops beautifully and spontaneously into a spaced out mantra half way between John Coltrane's "Ascension" and Funkadelic's "One nation under a groove".

Everything about this album is totally brilliant - cosmic lyrics, freaked out solos scattered over a musical landscape always on the verge of chaos but continually steered into new directions by inspired musicians at the peak of their powers, even the artwork and OTT hype in the sleevenotes (which for once is fully justified)....

Absolutely essential!!!!!

there are a lot of sun ra albums that i love, and a lot of them that i cannot stand. the pretentious avant-garde ones tend to fall into the second category. this one, though avant-garde in nature, is actually very listenable. featuring a lot of fantastic sax work from john gilmore, this is a great place to dip your feet into sun ra's freaky side. the great john coltrane was a huge fan of john gilmore, and it's easy to figure out why. the compostions on this album are 'out there' in nature, but yet easy to reach with your heart. i recommend this to those with a taste for musical adventuring.

A brilliant strange album that is very spacy. This is probably not a album for old school jazz puritans, it's a album for those who want more. Sun Ra looks like his music, that is very wired, in a positive sence. He gives his musicians complete freedoom. You can hear the musicians really enjoing themselves in the way they play. A chaotic album in a chaotic world !

I am a huge fan of Sun Ra, but I don't think this album is as good as his best. There are three long sprawling tracks. It is pretty avant garde stuff and if you like the jazzier Sun Ra, as I do, then this isn't one of the better ones. If you are into avant garde you may enjoy it more than I do.

The music here has a vibe not dissimilar to that on "Lanquidity", another album currently in-print that was recorded late in a New York night during the disco age. And like that album (as well as the hard-to-find "Sleeping Beauty" and "On Jupiter") featuring an Arkestra that had some R&B roots in the ground.

The music is gentle "quiet storm" R&B with washes of sound over the top ... the recording here is clear and crisp. It's gentle groove music and there's a kind of perfection to it.

This was the first Sun Ra album I ever bought and is still my favourite. Not quite as far out as some of his 1960's material and perhaps the most accessible of his truly great works, it features a formidable late-1970's version of the Arkestra on 3 extended tracks, each of which develops beautifully and spontaneously into a spaced out mantra half way between John Coltrane's "Ascension" and Funkadelic's "One nation under a groove".

Everything about this album is totally brilliant - cosmic lyrics, freaked out solos scattered over a musical landscape always on the verge of chaos but continually steered into new directions by inspired musicians at the peak of their powers, even the artwork and OTT hype in the sleevenotes (which for once is fully justified)....

Absolutely essential!!!!!

there are a lot of sun ra albums that i love, and a lot of them that i cannot stand. the pretentious avant-garde ones tend to fall into the second category. this one, though avant-garde in nature, is actually very listenable. featuring a lot of fantastic sax work from john gilmore, this is a great place to dip your feet into sun ra's freaky side. the great john coltrane was a huge fan of john gilmore, and it's easy to figure out why. the compostions on this album are 'out there' in nature, but yet easy to reach with your heart. i recommend this to those with a taste for musical adventuring.

A brilliant strange album that is very spacy. This is probably not a album for old school jazz puritans, it's a album for those who want more. Sun Ra looks like his music, that is very wired, in a positive sence. He gives his musicians complete freedoom. You can hear the musicians really enjoing themselves in the way they play. A chaotic album in a chaotic world !

I am a huge fan of Sun Ra, but I don't think this album is as good as his best. There are three long sprawling tracks. It is pretty avant garde stuff and if you like the jazzier Sun Ra, as I do, then this isn't one of the better ones. If you are into avant garde you may enjoy it more than I do.

The music here has a vibe not dissimilar to that on "Lanquidity", another album currently in-print that was recorded late in a New York night during the disco age. And like that album (as well as the hard-to-find "Sleeping Beauty" and "On Jupiter") featuring an Arkestra that had some R&B roots in the ground.

The music is gentle "quiet storm" R&B with washes of sound over the top ... the recording here is clear and crisp. It's gentle groove music and there's a kind of perfection to it.

This was the first Sun Ra album I ever bought and is still my favourite. Not quite as far out as some of his 1960's material and perhaps the most accessible of his truly great works, it features a formidable late-1970's version of the Arkestra on 3 extended tracks, each of which develops beautifully and spontaneously into a spaced out mantra half way between John Coltrane's "Ascension" and Funkadelic's "One nation under a groove".

Everything about this album is totally brilliant - cosmic lyrics, freaked out solos scattered over a musical landscape always on the verge of chaos but continually steered into new directions by inspired musicians at the peak of their powers, even the artwork and OTT hype in the sleevenotes (which for once is fully justified)....

Absolutely essential!!!!!

Recorded in 1966 and 1967, the music is perhaps the most experimental in the vast discography of Sun Ra. The Arkestra plays stringed instruments - kotos, banjos, ukuleles, koras - with no prior rehearsals.

Worlds Approaching is a true ambiance of noise, while a dense soundscape is built upon in Strange Strings and Strange Strange. The later number - Door Squeak - finds Sun Ra "playing" a door with a squeaky hinge, while the Arkestra weaves around that sound.

The focus is on performance art and the work of artists with unfamiliar instruments to create spontaneous music.

The first two things that came to mind upon hearing this for the first time recently were Ornette Coleman's "Skies of America" and Butch Morris' comprovisations. Imagine that tradition--of free jazz/creative modern musicians using symphonic or large ensemble elements as a palette. Gorgeous, droning, and distinct even in Sun Ra's diverse canon. Recommended.

There are a considerable number of Sun Ra sessions available on CD, but the welcome appearance of this vital disc completes the availability of his most important works. (I phoned the kind folks at Evidence a number of years ago, begging for a "Strings" release, but their response was that they didn't have a decent master tape of it, even if the LP was still being pressed.)

Strings comes from the mid-60's NYC period when Mr. Mystery was at his creative height, releasing such classics as Cosmic Tones, Heliocentric Worlds and the Magic City. Each is unique, but Strings completely stands out in terms of one of a kind brilliance.

Sonny sent his band over to a 3rd world import shop to pick up various modest hand made musical instruments. Then, after scant time to become at all familiar with them, he turned on the tape deck and conducted his band into a performance that is both fascinating and compelling. It is pure magic. Highest possible recommendation to anyone seeking a most bold and adventurous work of art.

This CD tacks on an additional track recorded a year after the first three. It consists of Sonny playing a squeaking door, accompanied by a couple of those plucking strings. While it may not be his most compelling composition, it must be said that he puts his complete focus into getting everything he can out of that squeak, extracting a strong fundamental tone that has an almost synthesized quality. As usual his Saturian mind was sensitive to sound potentials that elude the imagination of mere earthlings.

"I'm painting pictures of things I know about, and things I've felt, that the world hasn't had the chance to feel..." -Sun Ra, interviewed by Henry Dumas in 1966.
Recorded in 1966, and first published in 1967,this is the peak of Sun Ra's studies on possibilities of strings' sound.
The Arkestra uses here a huge range of strings instruments, from the usual (like double bass and viola), to the exotic ones (ukelin, bandura, zither,dutar and others), identified in the original liner notes as "electronic strings", but that were acoustic instruments amplified with microphones placed very close to the sound hole, and then treated with reverb and distortion.
Track One "Worlds Approaching" has still a comforting arrangement of the horns and rhythm section, with solos of saxophone and trombone and a metal percussion that supports the solos and persists throughout the track.
On Track Two and Three "Strings Strange" and "Strange Strange",there's no more horn section and enter the strings, joined by the same metal percussion that could be heard at the end of "World Approaching".
Atmosphere has changed now: there are some Eastern reminiscences but it seems to listen to an avant european combo of the 70's.
Track Four "Door Squeak" is the bonus track, recorded in 1967 and previously unissued.
This recording, as said by Hal Rammel in the liner notes "trumps even Strange Strings in musical singularity". Sun Ra plays a squeaking door to the accompaniment of the strings and some on-and-off percussion: the resulting mix is unique and miraculous, an exploration of the deep space sound .
Thanks to Atavistic for this wonderful reissue: it is perhaps the most difficult of all Sun Ra's records, but is one of his masterpieces and worth a careful listening.

The tracks on Atom Music's "Strange Worlds" are the same as on 1970's "The Solar Myth Approach" [volumes 1 and 2], label Snapper UK, ASIN B0002CU4Z2. Audio quality sounds the same to me. There are three minor differences: (1) this release from Atom Music is cheaper; (2) track sequence is different for no apparent reason; (3) most of these tracks are two seconds shorter than their counterparts on "The Solar Myth Approach." Listeners new to Sun Ra should start with other releases, of work from 1956 to 1964, much of which is on Evidence Records. Four stars just because, well, it is Ra.

Unsatisfied that bop was considered a thing of the past, Dave Parker (saxes), Mike Murley (saxes), Richard Underhill (saxes), Jim Vivian (bass) and Stitch Wynston (drums) collaborated and jammed on the streets of downtown Toronto to produce some of the most unlikely songs to ever break into the Canadian Top 40. "Spadina Bus" (an ode to the Toronto bus system) and "Out Of My House, Roach" received unexpected attention on Much Music (Canadian MTV), and the album sold 15 000: a record for a Canadian independant release that was eventually bested by The Barenaked Ladies' "Yellow Tape".
The songs are tightly written to promote bop ideals and values delivered with a sophisticated blend of musicianship and absurdity. The vocal tracks (Spadina Bus, Out Of My House Roach and The Puker) are entertaining bop rap songs, but the strongest moments of the album are on their instrumental tracks, such as Gabi's Gimi Suit and The Shuffle Monster.
The melodies tend to be very repetitive, but are decorated appropriately with a tapestry of sax interplay, though Vitamin K is the most notable exception, not only being the most elaborately written song on the album, but could easily have been written in the very era the Demons are representing. This album will appeal to fans of 50s and 60s bop, mild avant-garde, and is a solid addition to any jazz collection.
Tracks 1-6 and 9 appeared on the original release. Tracks 7, 8, 10 & 11 are live bonus tracks.