Sun Ra in Chronological Order: An Arkestra Listening Thread + Related Solar Sounds

also, this has the definitive version of "I'm Gonna Unmask the Batman"

Oh man, I am loving this looser piano-driven version of 'Island In The Sun' and this might be definitive too, esp. with the eruption of vocalisations at 5 minutes in. Only two* other recordings of this to my knowledge for comparison though (the complete 1970 version from Invisible Shield reissue, and the 1980/12/31 version from Detroit JC Residency) - please let me know if you know of more!

*I believe the 'Janus' version is just a cut of the complete Invisible Shield version with a flatter mix (it is probably in fact the edit that was issued on the original Invisible Shield LP but I don't have a copy of that for a listen and I can't find a resource with track lengths to confirm).

A little digging has also turned up a tight little version by Nostalgia 77 & The Monster from their 2014 release 'Measures' that ain't half bad.

I think you're right about Janus vs. Invisible Shield versions there, I was pretty familiar with Janus before hearing the latter.

also thanks for being here!

this one was really great and I might even buy the LP

this looser piano-driven version of 'Island In The Sun'

yes ! and the hand claps are lovely, too

kind of lanky and airy

So because I do love a treasure hunt, a non-exhaustive investigation into what versions of Unmask the Batman are out there:

Chicago Blues guitarist, Lacy Gibson was the brother-in-law of Sun Ra and co-wrote 'I Am Gonna Unmask The Batman' with Sun Ra's business manager, Alton Abraham.

*Lacy Gibson - 1969 Single Version

* Lacy Gibson - Extended Version of the above released on the Rocket Ship Rock compilation (assume this was recorded in 1969 as well)

*Sun Ra And His Astro-Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra 1974 Single Version

* Sun Ra Trumper Player Akh Tal Ebah shouts his way wildly through a home recorded (?) version collected on the Rocket Ship Rock compilation (19??)

* Sun Ra - Of Abstract Dreams version here - 1974 or 1975 - definitive as Sleeve suggests with James Jacson growling out the vocals

*Sun Ra & Arkestra - 1990 live version(?) - I do really enjoy the crowd interaction at the end of this 10min+ version purported to be from a 1990 date at Nightstage, Cambridge, MA that has popped up recently on Youtube.


* The Sun Ra Arkestra - 21 May 2014 Babylon Club, Istanbul (released on the deluxe Babylon Live) - they’re having fun with this messy blues boogie, great vocal interplay between Tara Middleton and Marshall Allen to start it off and then the sax takes over

*The Barrence Whitfield Soul Savage Arkestra - Songs From The Sun Ra Cosmos - Tribute Album - far from essential but check out those noisy breakdown sections.

Lo

1974 - I’m Gonna Unmask The Batman/The Perfect Man 7”

https://img.discogs.com/DDVIk90TedKu1CFIyTv0gm_vt_M=/fit-in/592x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3066233-1350430176-7247.jpeg.jpg

https://www.discogs.com/The-Sun-Ra-Arkestra-Im-Gonna-Unmask-The-Batman-The-Perfect-Man/master/1722266

Repressed twice in the 70’s, and there are actually copies for sale on Discogs! Over $200, but yeah.

This is an A+ fucking sweet classic, funky and fun. Included on the Singles anthology and well worth your time.

heck yeah

HOL UP

So I did a little more digging and found four more Batman's on some bootlegs of varying quality (28 October 1984, 1 Jan 1985, 5 Jan 1985, 25 October 1985).

On the two early '85 ones the bass is high in the mix with Rollo Radford getting lots of freedom to play around. The mix on the New Year's day recording is pretty poor, bordering on unlistenable, and Rollo's not sounding 100% on it. These issues, however, are not present on the 5 January 1985 version which I've uploaded to Youtube for your aural pleasure. This might be my favourite the way it comes together post-bass explorations - joyous vocals.

very cool, thanks Finn.

re: batman '74, from the campbell / trent disco:

Alton Abram claims Chicago as the location, but according to Terry Adams, Hal Willner was working at a small radio station in Philadelphia when this number was broadcast live from the studio. Jules Epstein says it was WXPN and questions whether July 4 was the actual date. [Vocalist Sam] Bankhead identified by Abraham. According to Bill Boelens, Aye Aton (aka Robert Underwood), who worked with the Arkestra from 1972 through 1976, has confirmed his presence on this date [on drums]. Other personnel identified by [Robert Campbell]. Thanks to Mike Fitzgerald for pointing out that Sunny himself was responsible for the bass line, and for identifying Sunny's keyboard (not a Mini-Moog or a Clavinet, but an RMI instrument, perhaps an Electra-Piano and Harpsichord Model 368, but probably Sunny's Rocksichord).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/RMI_300b.jpg

also worth checking out the 1968 lacy gibson original, with buddy guy on guitar (and evidently without ra's involvement):

https://img.discogs.com/5fWuJf1dUVOtG8tw75IBgYxp4d8=/fit-in/349x350/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1954690-1258757537.jpeg.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Tn0hxjxBw

very cool, thanks

I really do love the sound of that keyboard

1967/1974 - Sub Underground/Lost Ark Series/Temple University

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0449050994_10.jpg

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3247370536_16.jpg

STOP THE PRESSES AGAIN we have two more earlier tracks that got missed. From the liner notes to the 2014 Bandcamp reissue:

Sun Ra wasn't concerned about discographical codification. He left it to Ra scholars to make sense of his sprawling catalog, and mysteries abound. Sub Underground (#1), released in 1974, is one of those confusing entries.

The 21-minute LP A side, "Cosmo-Earth Fantasy," was presumed recorded at New York's Variety Studio in '74 , as noted in Campbell & Trent's massive discography, The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra (2nd ed., pub. 2000). That track was coupled on side B with three tracks from a purported "live" recording at Temple University that same year. Complicating matters from a title standpoint, Sun Ra released unrelated albums tagged "Sub Underground series," and this particular album (which carried no personnel or recording info) also appeared in hand-designed sleeves under the titles Sub Underground #2, Cosmo-Earth Fantasy, and Live at Temple University 1974. If it was a live album, the Arkestra had performed before an audience possessed of such hushed reverence that they don't make a sound before, during, or after each piece. The Sun Ra Music Archive's Michael Anderson, a former Temple student, believes that the performance took place in the college chapel. Others have suggested the Temple radio station. The recordings on side B undoubtedly originated in a studio, an ad hoc studio, or—as it turns out—studios.

Enter Ra scholar Paul Griffiths, who in 2011 found an album master tape of "Cosmo-Earth" formerly owned by the late Ra business partner James Bryant. In an Art Yard CD reissue, Griffith says the words "strings bandura" are handwritten on the reel. The beginning of "Cosmo-Earth" features sounds reminiscent of Ra's singular 1967 Saturn release Strange Strings, on which Arkestrans plucked and savaged string instruments with which they were otherwise unfamiliar. The bandura, dubbed the "Space Harp," was featured on a number of Ra albums in the late 1960s. Griffith writes:

"['Cosmo-Earth'] features an opening section of music using the strange strings, including the bandura as mentioned on the tape box. As several of the string instruments were destroyed in a car accident in 1969, and the bandura itself was left in the possession of Hartmut Geerken in 1971 after the Arkestra’s legendary first Egyptian visit, this music cannot postdate these events and a revision of the recording date is needed."

Griffith further observes:

"Ra plays Hohner Clavinet on this recording in close stylistic proximity to that on the LPs Atlantis [1967], Solar Myth Approach Vols. 1 & 2 ['67-'68], and Continuation ['68]. The feel of the whole piece is very much in the style of the exploratory work undertaken by the Arkestra in the later New York period between '66 and early ’68. It is very likely that this music was recorded in 1967 or possibly early 1968 before the Arkestra moved to Philadelphia."

Griffith affirms that "Love Is For Always" and "The Song of the Drums" were indeed recorded at Temple in '74. But he reexamines "The World of Africa," stating:

"… [It] is clearly not from the same concert as its predecessors and takes us back to 1968 when vocalist June Tyson joined the band. Ra is again featured on Hohner Clavinet playing very much in the style of the small group Atlantis sessions from the previous year, with a host of Arkestra members on percussion."

Everything Griffith asserts is believable and logical. Ra was renowned for compiling LPs from unrelated sessions and different locations, with material recorded years apart and offering radical juxtapositions of style. Sub Underground is business as usual on Saturn.

With this in mind, I put the two 1960’s tracks in the Spotify playlist right after Atlantis, the rest is in 1974.

A few other 1974 Temple University recordings are on the out-of-print Lost Ark Series, you can listen at the link below:

https://sunrastrut.bandcamp.com/album/lost-ark-series-vol-1-2

I’m pretty unimpressed with the sidelong track, but “The World Of Africa” might actually be the first recorded appearance of June Tyson? And it’s a good track as well.

oops

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/sub-underground-1

wow I'm listening to the 1974 tracks now and their version of "Love Is For Always" is just gorgeous, slow and stately and introspective. I assume it's a jazz standard?

Yes, gorgeous is the right word. I'm not aware of any standard by that name and I can't find anything additional info on the track, or any other recordings. Seems to have deserved better!

6/16/1974 - Out Beyond The Kingdom Of/Discipline 99

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2048141584_10.jpg

A rare one, only reissued via Bandcamp in April 2018 after almost 40 years of obscurity.

Discipline 99, a.k.a. Out Beyond the Kingdom Of, was recorded at a Hunter College, New York, performance by Sun Ra & His Arkestra on June 16, 1974. Selected titles were issued that year on LP (Saturn 61674); the album went thru several pressings with different-colored labels, at least as late as 1980. As with many privately pressed Saturns from the 1970s and '80s, the total press run is unknown, but presumably it totals in the hundreds, not the thousands, hence original copies are rare.

Some copies of D99 featured a generic "Acropolis" cover, others were hand-decorated or sported paste-on art. The cover of this digital edition, scanned from an LP sleeve in the collection of Gilbert Hsiao, features one of the best illustrations we've seen of ANY Saturn DIY release. (The artist is unknown; this illustration graced the sleeves of other Saturn releases from the period, but this particular cover had "Discipline 99" handwritten in the upper left.)

A sad Discogs review notes “Sound quality isn't the greatest on this one.”

Some interesting observations from Sun Ra Sundays:

The first thing you notice is the school has provided Sonny with a decent grand piano, and he relishes in the opportunity to tickle the ivories… An obsessive collector in the year 2011 will have heard these routines many times before, but in 1974, live recordings were scarce. Sonny was shrewdly filling the gap, documenting the Arkestra’s current show for eager fans. Considered in that light, Out Beyond The Kingdom Of was exactly what it needed to be: a souvenir you could take home with you from the Cosmo Drama.

I like this alternate cover as well:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Npkv03Myo1I/Tb36Ai314ZI/AAAAAAAABoE/5zx51z9eOKg/s1600/Sun_Ra_-_Out_Beyond.jpg

I keep forgetting the Bandcamp links, sorry

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/discipline-99-out-beyond-the-kingdom-of

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Intergalactic-Research-Arkestra-Out-Beyond-The-Kingdom-Of/master/1007174

really dig the sparse vocal / percussion / keyboard track "the song of drums" from "sub underground #1" with these two:

Eddie Thomas (Thomas Thaddeus): vocal (3)
Akh Tal Ebah (?): 2nd vocal (3)

and then just BOOM right into the funk with "the world of africa"

stoked for OBTKO / D99

i definitely recognize this version of the cover art:

https://img.discogs.com/EZGlYPFi4Oy0cVb4bY5FwUulxtw=/fit-in/600x615/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-8782338-1485363352-2577.jpeg.jpg

^^ yeah I posted that for the "Sub Underground" entry, can't check right now but maybe that design was used on multiple releases?

firing this new one up now

it is such a typical Sun Ra mess-with-yr-head thing that the intro was lifted from a totally different show!

the grand piano sounds really great on this one, no idea what all the whining about "sound quality" is on about

maybe it's because my brain is mush, but this "discipline 99" sounds so very different than the ones we've heard before. sounds very very indebted to ellington, beautiful dense harmonies with the swelling propulsion

xxxp to myself

oops sorry I posted that cover way back under "What's New/Invisible Shield", damn hybrid releases

August 17th, 1974 - The Antique Blacks

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3901814992_10.jpg

Another originally-rare one pressed to sell at shows that has gone through several updates/permutations. Today is it probably the best known of the 1974 recordings I think? Originally released on Saturn in 1974 with the cover art posted by budo jeru above:

https://img.discogs.com/lcxFmNb_alqpLv3gFloD77dcYyo=/fit-in/600x450/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2876404-1422207800-6418.jpeg.jpg

and a number of variants:

https://img.discogs.com/rJihg_S_B6uXbHY6pNeNKXYJ4ew=/fit-in/400x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2876404-1438454293-9800.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/dFXaJQoeKjcFbkFYDxhR8OxXwNU=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2876404-1526984899-8676.jpeg.jpg

The Antique Blacks, original copies of which are quite rare, was one of those LPs that Sun Ra pressed in very limited quantities to sell at concerts and club dates. The recordings apparently originated from a 1974 Temple University (Philadelphia) radio broadcast. Like many independently pressed and self-released albums on Ra's Saturn label, it's a mixed bag of material with little continuity or consistency. That's not a bug—it's a feature. It contains a jaunty jam ("Song No. 1"), a few songs, and lots of Sunny's declamatory (and inscrutable) sermonizing.

Then, as usual, 35 years went by until Art Yard reissued it on 2009.

After a 30+ year absence from the market , it was reissued on CD in 2010 by the U.K. label Art Yard, who replicated the LP sequence. In fact, due to the absence of tapes, a vintage vinyl copy was used for the reissue, which included a mono bonus track, "You Thought You Could Build a World Without Us.”

But last year it got updated again, as per the 2019 Bandcamp remaster/revision:

After the completed CD production, Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive discovered the master tapes from the date. One of the revelations was that three tracks from the LP, "There Is Change in the Air," the above-named bonus track, and the album title track, were actually part of a continuous 24-1/2 minute suite. When the original LP was compiled, some bridge material had been edited out, and three components of the suite were isolated as standalone tracks. For this digitally remastered edition, the entire suite is presented for the first time (and in full stereo). In addition, "Song No. 1," which was the opening track on the LP, has been placed where it stands in sequence on the tape, as track 4.

What sounds like an audio glitch at 7:21 in "Space is the Place" is in fact a four-second patch of tape spliced in reverse—Sun Ra's contribution to the sinister '70s practice of lyrical backmasking.

There was some speculation about the source of "You Thought You Could Build A World Without Us." Based on comments made by Sun Ra himself on WKCR in 1987 (when it was aired), Sun Ra discographers Robert Campbell and Christopher Trent speculated that the track was an outtake from the 1972 film soundtrack for Space is the Place. However, RC/CT note that electric guitarist Dale Williams did not join the Arkestra until 1974. The discovery of the master tape confirms the provenance of the performance.

Historical footnote: Producer Hal Willner claims he witnessed these sessions at Temple University. Ask him about it.

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-antique-blacks

interesting theories from Sun Ra Sundays on this one:

On August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned as President of the United States. I imagine this extraordinary event was on Sun Ra’s mind when, a week later, he assembled a small Arkestra for a live radio broadcast at Temple University in Philadelphia on August 17 [FN1]. While not making any direct references to Nixon, Ra took the opportunity to sermonize at length and he felt strongly enough about the performance to edit the recording for an LP entitled, The Antique Blacks, released on his own Saturn label later in the year (Saturn 81774). Ra clearly felt he had to get his message out. In actuality, this record was pressed in vanishingly small editions, sometimes re-titled, Interplanetary Concepts or There Is A Change In The Air and with various covers, including a generic “Acropolis” sleeve (see Campbell & Trent, pp.212-213). Like the mystical texts in his personal library, The Antique Blacks was probably made available to only initiates or persons Ra felt could decode his deeper, spiritual meanings. The ever-resourceful Art Yard label has reissued the album on CD with a bonus track recorded at the same session—but beware: Ra’s philosophizing is as inscrutable as ever, making this a strange and difficult listen for the casual fan. Keep in mind: it was a different era.

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2011/05/sun-ra-sunday_29.html

v interesting

whoa the electric guitar 3 minutes in is nuts

I miss Outic and Kate’s reliable input on these, but I’m glad there are still people following along.

September 6th, 1974 - Wake Up Angels disc 2 (Ann Arbor Jazz & Blue Festival)

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2636405847_10.jpg

The last set included in the Art Yard double CD, once again John Sinclair has staggeringly extensive liner notes. Here’s a small excerpt, all typos in the original:

Meanwhile, In Windsor. Sun Ra & the Arkestra took the stage at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival in exile following an Introduction by Bobby Bass of WJZZ-FM and-as the evidence on this disc Indicates-turned the place upside down. A long passage of introductory music improvised by Ra and the ensemble is followed by a seamless program of some of the Arkestra’s greatest hits – -Discipline 27″ and -27-11: ‘Love In Outer Space,” -The Shadow World: -Space Is The Place.- “Second Stop Jupiter: “What Planet Is This: “lmages,” “Watusi- and the closing “Sun Ra and His Band From Outer Space”-plus one number which is thought to have previously been unrecorded, the daring anthem titled ‘It Is Forbidden: The ranks of the Arkestra Included Ra’s greatest reed section ever, with Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Elo Omoe, Danny Davis, James Jacson and Danny ‘Pekoe” Thompson. plus Kwame Hadi and Akh Tal Ebah on trumpets, Dale Williams on electric guitar, Detroit’s own Reginald –“Shoo-Bee-Doo” Fields on bass. Clifford Jarvis at the drums and Stanley “Atakatune” Morgan on congas. June Tyson and the Space Ethnic Voices, Judith Holton and Cheryl Banks, strutted and crooned out in front of the band, framing the mind-boggling keyboard improvisations and fierce chanted philosophy of their undisputed leader, the great Sun Ra. The multi-track master tapes of the Arkestra’s performance were quite reasonably withheld by recordist Chuck Buchanan when it became clear that he could not be paid for his work. and they’ve never been seen again. What remains is the cassette tape recorded from the board mix during the performance, now transferred Into the digital realm and available again on this two-disc set from Art Yard.

Once again there is some excellent historical context here:
https://aadl.org/node/197478

https://aadl.org/sites/default/files/aa_sun/aa_sun_19740809_p018-001.jpg

Bandcamp link here:
https://sunrastrut.bandcamp.com/album/wake-up-angels

i too miss the thoughtful contributions of shakey and Kate. hopefully they'll both be back at some point.

that ann arbor sun scan is fantastic: DO NOT BRING YOUR STASH ACROSS !!

i'd recommend to anybody who's interested to read john sinclair's full liner notes to the art yard release: it's a fascinating bit of history of the white panther party's evolution into the rainbow people's party and its efforts organizing the AABJ, with some behind-the-scene peaks at DIY booking + promoting, and also drug deals gone bad and conflicts with the squares on the city council.

i've really enjoyed all the ann arbor sets so far, will probably shell out for the 2xCD.

don't have much to comment on the music specifically except that i find this great. we've moved into an era where it feels like the music is almost uniformly exceptional and we're hearing so many re-workings of a core set of compositions that it's hard for me, as a layperson, to say articulate or meaningful things about a lot of what i've been listening to.

things are gonna change up again soon enough, the late 70's are a whole other world as I'm sure you know.

1975 and 1976 have a LOT less in terms of releases recorded in that time period, we're heading into a sparse zone.

May 1975 - What’s New (“We Roam The Cosmos”)

https://img.discogs.com/htTpRMAoN-6nqjx5eGJNUlt6yWI=/fit-in/600x546/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4085654-1355593711-3857.jpeg.jpg

The sole Sun Ra recording available from this year, amazingly. We’ve been through the earlier 1963 tracks on the A-side of the rare 1975 Saturn LP What’s New, but some even rarer versions came with this side-long B-side, “Live recording possibly May 23rd 1975 unknown venue”.

You can listen to this via the Bandcamp reissue page for the LP and associated tracks:

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Astro-Infinity-Arkestra-Cosmo-Earth-Fantasy-Sub-Underground-Series-Vol-1-2/release/4085654

forgot to spin this — will check back in tomorrow !

my apologies, that's not the Bandcamp link and you can't stream it

https://sunrastrut.bandcamp.com/album/cosmo-earth-fantasy-sub-underground-vol-1-2

here's the Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psvO0AIF3iA

whoa, intense one

this is awesome.

this is one of the ones i heard about but never managed to track down back in the day... eventually art yard put out "i roam the cosmos" and i sort of gave up. glad it's findable now, this is indeed an awesome and powerful variation on "space is the place".

1976 - Live At Montreaux

https://img.discogs.com/pThuKb8K9EtlI_A2PPll56BXtjE=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-609984-1229180364.jpeg.jpg

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-His-Arkestra-Live-At-Montreux/master/319222

Szwed:

“In the summer of 1976 the Arkestra began their fourth tour of Europe with twenty-eight people and ended with fourteen, playing all the major festivals, Paris, Montreux (where they recorded Live at Montreux), Pescara, Nimes, Northsea, Juan-les-Pins, and Arles, and were greeted everywhere as celebrities. Yet once they returned home to Philadelphia, they still sank back into semiobscurity, the band playing down the block at the Red Carpet Lounge to a neighborhood audience of twenty, or at outdoor free concerts in the parks of North Philadelphia, to which sometimes no one came (p.341).

We now enter the brief “Inner City” era, a US label that released the studio LP Cosmos in 1976, and later reissued this LP in 1978. This 1975-76 era is the most under-documented period we’ve seen since the late 50’s, only a handful of releases over the two years. Then things explode again in ’77, but we have one more to go.

Sun Ra Sundays:

“While very little documentation survives of this tour, Live At Montreux was to become a watershed album for Ra. Recorded for a state television broadcast at the legendary Swiss jazz festival on July 9, 1976, it was first issued as a two-LP set as Saturn MS87976 and reissued by Inner City as IC1039 in 1978 (Campbell & Trent, pp.222-224). Live At Montreux would be one the few Sun Ra records to be widely available in the late-1970s and early-1980s and it was, for many people my age, their first (and perhaps only) exposure to his music. But what a great record it is! Ra was provided a decent piano and he makes good use of it (along with his battery of electronic keyboards), guiding the Arkestra through a remarkably inventive setlist. The enormous band includes many returning alumnus, including Pat Patrick on baritone sax and flute, Chris Capers on trumpet and Craig Harris on trombone, and their performance is uniformly first rate. Moreover, the sound quality is excellent—a blessed relief after all the grungy bootlegs we’ve been listening to lately. In fact, it might be one of the best-sounding releases in Ra’s enormous discography. In many ways, Live At Montreux is the definitive Sun Ra album.”

Unfortunately, this one isn’t on Bandcamp/Spotify, but there are some scattered Youtube links to parts of it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=sun+ra+live+at+montreux+1976

Dig this A+ version of ‘Take The A-Train” which I believe La Lechera used in her music class!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k341z3dsXy4

Sorry for the short week, will try to post more next week.

oh FFS I didn't fix my title typo, yes it is "Montreux"

here's a familiar release !

v happy to re-visit this today

huh, i never noticed before that sunny calls ellington the composer of "take the a train"! well he was always more into fletch...

on side 4 now, I have a US Inner City 2LP that survived an initial (ill-advised) purge of my Sun Ra section and has been in my stacks for decades now. yeah, this one has it all.

1976 - Cosmos

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1518380454_10.jpg

Originally released on the French Cobra label, the following year on Inner City in the US, and then on a series of ill-fated reissues with screwed up sound, some bootlegs, and finally a real Bandcamp remaster in 2016.

From Sun Ra Sundays:

While on their fourth tour of Europe in August 1976, the Arkestra (a portion of it, anyway) entered Studio Hautefeuille in Paris to record an album for the French Cobra label, which released later in the year as Cosmos (COB 37001).

Some notes from the Bandcamp remaster:

Each time it resurfaced, the audio quality changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. On the 1991 CD, the bass was mixed at woofer-quaking levels; the Inner City LP sounds flat.

The presence of the ROCKSICHORD—a slightly cheesy electronic harpsichord popular in the late 1960s with psychedelic bands and some avant-garde composers—links Cosmos with Ra's 1970 album NIGHT OF THE PURPLE MOON. Though six years apart, they are in some ways companion albums (and in some ways, not). Like Purple Moon, Cosmos features a more accessible side of Ra, a mix of relatively earthbound ensemble jazz and pan-galactic excursions.

This one is totally new to me but I am way down for a new studio session, time to cue it up.

oh see also this intriguing quote from SRS:

But as great as the band sounds on this date, it is Ra’s electric keyboard that makes this such a delightfully engaging record for me. Throughout the album, Ra’s Rocksichord has this weird, wire-thin, reedy sound quality, upon which he pours some molasses-thick phase-shifter that hisses away incessantly in the background. Now, in anyone else’s hands, this would be unbelievably cheesy, even amateurish. Yet Ra guilelessly tackles the wide variety material and, through his visionary technical abilities, miraculously balances the seemingly limited electronic keyboard textures with the expansive, acoustic Arkestra to create a decidedly strange, but appropriately otherworldly ambience.

i love the label design on the original french release:

https://img.discogs.com/1txp9NJicoFUJccvWHvGZqLmWNg=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1067705-1193094726.jpeg.jpg

i was initially relieved to hear how crisp the sound was and, like you, was looking forward to a studio session, but i just hate the way the electric bass sounds on this, especially when it's doing the more conventional walking lines on the more straightforward big band arrangements. it's a shame because the horn arrangements are great and the soloists are killing it. it's WAY cheesier than the rocksichord, which i actually think sounds really good. so in that regard SRS otm. bass sounds nice on "interstellar low ways" tho.

"moonship journey" refrain is going to loop in my head for the rest of my life

early 1977 - A Quiet Place In The Universe

https://img.discogs.com/QIwkLURdwrbG356tpHoD978qeBg=/fit-in/600x590/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2550456-1581183082-1110.jpeg.jpg

Released on CD by Leo Records in 1994. “Later Campbell-Trent discography (The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra, 2nd edition, pp. 235) suggests early 1977 and add an unidentified female vocal.”

The first of ELEVEN releases recorded this year, an embarrassment of riches. Not on Bandcamp or Spotify but we got a Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drs11_p7Pdw

SRS: “As befitting the title, A Quiet Place In The Universe is a somewhat subdued affair lacking any wild, skronky improvisations, rip-snorting big-band numbers—or even a single Gilmore solo. Nevertheless, it is a uniquely satisfying album with the title track worth the price of admission for its rarity alone. It also helps that the sound quality is excellent throughout. Leo CDs can be a little hit-or-miss, but this one is a keeper.”

Totally unfamiliar with this one, so just gonna dive in.

i feel like i need to find a quiet place in the universe right now, so this is perfect timing. thank you sleeve.