Sun Ra

Sun Ra, piano, organ, drum box, Crumar Mainman; Luqman Ali, drums.
Be warned: Sun Ra is a prophet, and you mock or scoff at him at your peril. -John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle
Chilly Jay Chill: We usually post more than one song, but we think this track deserves your undivided attention.

We often find ourselves tempted to collect a lot of great stuff without actually spending the time to, you know, listen to it. But you ll want to give this at least a few spins pronto.
Prof.

Drew Le Drew: This track leaves me almost speechless. It s what? Minimalist breakbeat techno meets monster dub groove?

CJC: Pulp has a rather excellent song titled . But truly, Ra is running millennial circles around them with his Disco 3000 joint.
DLD: And he s still about 50 years ahead of everybody else.

In many ways, even today s most cutting-edge music hasn t caught up with this.  could ve copped most of his ideas off this track and still come back for seconds. It s what?

Afro-glitch trance exotica?
CJC: You can hear a serious minimalist influence  echoes of Terry Riley s in Ra s hypnotic organ drones  but this is darker, more textured, laced with serious electronics. The rhythms are insanely forward-looking.

DLD: A lot of Ra nods to the past in fairly recognizable ways, but it s hard to hear the jazz antecedants in Cosmo-Aliens.  It s there in the melody, I guess, but the overall tone and instrumentation are so otherworldly. It s what?

Space-rock psychotronica?
CJC: I wonder if there s some actual disco in the DNA of this track. Maybe Ra was inspired by some Giorgio and/or Kraftwerk and then took it to another dimension.

DLD: It wouldn t sound out of place over at . It s what? Avant-rock dance-blogtastical?

CJC: Yes. Love that site. It also harkens slightly to the recent compilation, which featured Originals from the Cosmic Era.

Meaning Italian disco from the late 70s. Of course this Ra track is far more cosmic.
DLD: Interestingly, Dance of the Cosmo-Aliens was recorded live in Italy around that time.

So who knows.  
CJC: But let s face it: Basically we re just offering possible sign posts and entry points to the music. Wildly pointing our fingers in various directions hoping that one will help folks connect with this.

DLD: Just listen to the track. It s what? Eleven minutes of boop-bip jungle bop.

It ll tell you all you need to know.
@ % ! $ * ?

> ~ $  
Waxophilic types may be interested to know that this album was somewhat recently reissued on high-grade vinyl, by Art Yard. See for consumer possibilities. May be too late, though.

Re Crumar Mainman,  who has on occasion been cited as an additional player on this disk (and on Media Dreams, which draws from the same concert): it is a synthesizer a seemingly very rare synth produced by the Crumar company. Looking at  , and other spots, it would appear possible that the instrument Ra used was in fact a Crumar Multiman, but we await further clarification in the comments, as possible.
Ra, piano; John Gilmore, tenor sax; Michael Ray, trumpet; Luqman Ali, drums.

may not have come from Saturn, but his discography feels like a cosmos unto itself. Although Evidence has done a terrific job reissuing many of his key recordings, there are still plenty of black holes out there. New Steps fills one, emerging from a small cluster of out-of-print recordings from the late 1970s.

Esteemed Sun Ra biographer John F. (see: ) calls these recordings - and New Steps in particular – “some of the most interesting and little known of the entire Sun Ra output.” In January 1978, Ra took a quartet to Italy.

He famously had misgivings about small groups, but the foursome recorded a number of albums during their stay. It s a rare treat to hear this group in such a stripped-down setting and to witness Ra s cosmic vision realized in miniature.  
“Rome at Twilight” starts with a relaxed vamp, then Gilmore enters playing a repetitive figure that the rest of the music begins to orbit.

It anchors the tune, then releases the accumulated energy with a beautifully sustained and soulful solo in tandem with Ra. Throughout, Ali keeps the beat brewing – the sort of dry and persistently funky meter that wouldn t sound out of place behind, say, Four Tet. Shades, too, of .

Coltrane studied with John Gilmore – not the other way around. He was a big influence on Trane’s playing and in helping him to realize the possibilities of playing free. So it’s especially interesting to hear Gilmore take a crack at “My Favorite Things,” the tune Coltrane introduced into the jazz lexicon back in the early 1960s.

 
This is a more low-key reading, but subtly eccentric. Breezy, with a vibe that owes something to Vince Guaraldi, of all people, which only makes the tune stranger. Gilmore sticks pretty close to the basic melody; for variety there is some modulated piano from Ra, alternating randomly between stutter steps and large strides, keeping the tune tottering just slightly off balance, keeping possibilities in play.

For a reminder of one of many possibilities, we bring back, for this post only, Alice Coltrane s rendering of My Favorite Things. Compare and contrast.

An mp-free jazz blog focusing on rare or out-of-print music.

We generally publish twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays (or so). Songs will be available for about two weeks, and are for evaluation purposes only.

Chilly Jay Chill and Prof.

Drew LeDrew. Co-proprietors of . Requests, rants, and rights issues to: destination.

out [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com.

Because we like you. Also for the ladies.

Just be yourself. And no direct linking to tracks, please.

Read more on by destination-out.com. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sun Ra, New Steps, Chilly Jay, Favorite Things, Jay Chill, Cosmo Aliens, Luqman Ali, John Gilmore, But We, Chilly Jay Chill