Sun Ra
Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial. He did not make it easy for people to take him seriously, for he surrounded his adventurous music with costumes and mythology that both looked backward toward ancient Egypt and forward into science fiction. But despite all of the trappings, Sun Ra was a major innovator, starting off playing advanced bop, but early on was open to the influences of other cultures, experimenting with primitive electric keyboards, and playing free long before the avant-garde got established.
Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial. He did not make it easy for people to take him seriously, for he surrounded his adventurous music with costumes and mythology that both looked backward toward ancient Egypt and forward into science fiction. But despite all of the trappings, Sun Ra was a major innovator, starting off playing advanced bop, but early on was open to the influences of other cultures, experimenting with primitive electric keyboards, and playing free long before the avant-garde got established.
Space Is The Place
Tip! The holy grail for Sun Ra collectors and fans, an album that forever gave them a slogan to live by! The record's different than some of the other Arkestra work from the time – in that it's a bit tighter and more spiritual, more in keeping with the style of the Blue Thumb label, for which it was recorded – and soaring along on a wave of post-Coltrane spiritual jazz enthusiasm. Side one features the ultimate recording of "Space Is The Place" – an anthemic tune that blends chanting, modal rhyt…
Jazz In Silhouette
Enshrined in the Penguin Jazz Guide’s "Core Collection", this quintessential platter of Sun Ra’s late 1950s Chicago ensemble showcases the brilliant tenor sax stylings of John Gilmore, and introduces Arkestra mainstays Marshall Allen, Pat Patrick, and Ronnie Boykins. Recorded and issued in 1959, it marks a coda for the bandleader’s bebop/hard-bop stage, as his interstellar traveler persona began to transform the band (and the music). Many of the early works on these recordings would remain stapl…
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Vol.1
2023 repress. 180-gram black vinyl. The astonishing sessions that went light years beyond "free jazz" improvisation to create a music of deeply felt, explosive and gentle gesture made from sound itself without reference to previous notions of melody or harmony are now reissued on 180 gram vinyl with Sun Ra's original, self-created cover art. Recorded by Richard Alderson on April 20, 1965, this set of tunes finds Sun Ra breaking ground by using synthesizers and having the Arkestra musicians doubl…
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Vol.2
2023 repress. 180-gram black vinyl. Volume two of Sun Ra's classic Heliocentric recordings from the 1960s. The astonishing sessions that went light years beyond "free jazz" improvisation to create a music of deeply-felt, explosive and gentle gesture made from sound itself without reference to previous notions of melody or harmony are now reissued on 180 gram vinyl with Sun Ra's original, self-created cover art. Recorded by Richard Alderson on April 20, 1965, this set of tunes finds Sun Ra breaki…
The Solar-Myth Approach
A double cd that showcases both the prolific output and unparalleled creative verve of Sun Ra, the man who created his own genre. Upgrading his celebrated band The Arkestra to the rank of Solar Myth Arkestra, the bandleader-composer-pianist-keyboardist produced enough music in his lifetime to fill a universe, and these sessions, though their precise date and place of recording remain unknown, are among the finest he released in the ‘70, which was an action-packed decade for him.
Featuring rever…
Prophet
Featuring what may be his only recordings on the Prophet keyboard, these once lost performances expand the omniverse of Ra across a stellar set of lengthy cuts! All recorded in a single day and finally making their terrestrial debut! What happens when a Prophet meets a Prophet? The answer lies within these grooves. Amongst the hundreds of recordings issued by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, under their various guises, the majority were recorded in concert or in makeshift studios such as their early 19…
Esp-Disk
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* In October 2018, Steve Holtje, the mastermind of the pioneering American music label ESP, was invited by the 8th OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival to give a lecture in Shenzhen entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", unveiling the label for the first time to Chinese The talk was entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", and unveiled the myste…
The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra
This special 60th Anniversary reissue of groundbreaking jazz artist Sun Ra’s iconic 1962 album The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra features all-analog re-mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI. The package includes Tom Wilson’s original liner notes, plus insightful new essays by jazz historian Ben Young, as well as by Irwin Chusid, who is also a journalist, radio personality, and author. Engineered by Paul Cady, the sessions featured nine players, including Ra…
Disco 3000 -Complete Milan Concert 1978-
Disco 3000 is yet another release by the Sun Ra Quartet, recorded during an incredibly prolific period in Italy in January of 1978. The players are Ra (keys), John Gilmore (tenor sax), Michael Ray (trumpet), and Luqman Ali (drums), with assistance from the Crumar Mainman synthesizer/rhythm box. The title cut is pretty free, with Ra's carnival organ starting the proceedings along with some programmed rhythms. Everyone takes turns soloing, with Michael Ray doing his trademark trumpet-with-delay im…
Ra to the Rescue
'Ra to the Rescue was initially pressed in limited quantities in 1983, but several of its tracks subsequently were reissued with incongruous tracks on the albums (commonly referred to as) When Spaceships Appear, Cosmo-Party Blues, Somewhere There, and Children of the Sun. Those album "titles" are in many cases simply the names of the first track on a particular side (these were scribbled in pen on otherwise blank labels). To complicate matters, some tracks were retitled for reasons that shall fo…
Art on Saturn: The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra's Saturn Label (Book)
Drawn from private collections around the world, this is the first comprehensive collection of the Saturn label’s printed record covers, along with hundreds of the best hand-designed, one-of-a-kind sleeves and disc labels decorated by Sun Ra and members of his Arkestra.
Beautiful Young Generation
* Limited Edition 180-Gram white vinyl. Comes in a deluxe matte laminate gatefold sleeve * Newly mastered from original BYG tapes. BYG were a pioneering independant record compagny, one of the first labels to actively promote diversity and support black African-American musicians and multi-cultural artists worldwide during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Launched in the late ’60s in Paris, a city then in the throes of great social upheaval, BYG became the home of music that was uncompromisingly new. The…
Angels and Demons at Play (7")
* Pressed as a heavy weight single 70g with a picture sleeve. Edition of 750 * Angels and Demons at Play featuring Marshall Allen. Tracks include "Angels and Demons at Play" recorded in 1960, "Between Two Worlds" recorded in 1960. "Spontaneous Simplicity" recorded in 1966. Pressed as a heavy weight single 70g with a picture sleeve.
The album Angels And Demons At Play was compiled from two different sessions, recorded four years apart (1956 and 1960), that reflect Sun Ra's evolution from hard Chi…
Extensions Out, Plus: Four Poetry Books 1957-1972 (4x Books)
Corbett vs. Dempsey announce the release of four books of poetry by Sun Ra. Two of these were pamphlets that accompanied early Sun Ra albums issued in the late 1950s; the other two were published more than a decade later by Infinity Inc./Saturn Research. CvsD's reprints are fastidiously designed facsimiles of the original publications, marking the first time they have been available in their Ra-ordained form since they were published. An architect of Afrofuturism and one of the great musical thi…
I Struck a Match on the Moon / Dreamsville
In 1961 Sun Ra took off from Chicago – where he had established the Arkestra, his dedicated ensemble and the vehicle for his mission to better the planet – and with a scaled-down version of the band he landed in NewYork. Their first recording session was in Newark in October of that year. The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, recorded for the Savoy label, is a beautiful document of the material they'd honed during a long residency at the Wonder Inn at the end of the Chicago period. Among tracks left …
Dark Myth Equation Visitation
Live recordings from cosmic-jazz-grandmaster Sun Ra's Arkestra tour in Egypt during the 1970s. 'Dark Myth Equation Visitation', also known as 'Live In Egypt Vol. 1' or 'Nature’s God', was recorded in 1971. Side one of the LP features a recording of a TV performance, including an interview, and side two fronts tracks recorded during a concert in Heliopolis near Cairo.
The impact and significance of these few weeks upon Sun Ra can be measured by the growth and development of his output over the ne…
A Fireside Chat with Lucifer
* First ever reissues of this iconic demonic slice of Saturnian splendor, one of the most coveted releases in the Ra canon! Features the emblematic “Nuclear War” anthem, earmarked to be played like an air raid siren when we as a society decide to pack up and call it a planet. A cut further popularized by Yo La Tengo. Stunning new cover art blending favorite elements from the handmade original Saturn pressings. * While the most renown track in this omniversal opus is the atomic expletive-filled r…
Monorails & Satellites: Works for Solo Piano Vols. 1, 2, 3
Triple-LP version. Tri-gatefold cover. "Considering the monumental depth of Sun Ra's recorded oeuvre, there are surprisingly few solo piano albums. Monorails & Satellites Volumes 1 and 2 were the first commercial LPs of the artist's solo keyboard excursions. Recorded in 1966 and released on his Saturn imprint in 1968, Volume 1 featured seven idiosyncratic originals and one standard ('Easy Street') delivered in Sunny's singular manner. Volume 2 was released the following year, and contains five c…
The Intergalactic Thing
Killer a collection of rehearsals taped in the fall of 1969 at Ra's home studio in Philadelphia. The studio was also his home and the home of most of his Arkestra, here called the Astro- Ihnfinity Arkestra. The music here is meditative, soul nurturing medicine. Just about every musician from the Arkestra, even the renowned saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen, doubles on percussion. One might think, with a discography as extensive as the one Sun Ra boasts, that the scope of his work ha…
Concert for the Comet Kohoutek
Recorded on December 22, 1973 in New York City at the famous Town Hall, this eclectic ESPDisk-sponsored celebration of the Comet Kohoutek featured a fire eater, talking drums, and dancers in platform shoes, in addition to Sun Ra's Arkestra. After taking the stage ninety minutes late, the band expertly navigates its way through cosmic free playing, big-band romps, and didactic vocal numbers. Compared to the original pressing, this re-issue is digitally remastered by Joe Phillips and includes brie…