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Sun Ra, Arkestra

Angels and Demons at Play (7")

Label: Art Yard

Format: 7"

Genre: Jazz

In stock

€15.00
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* 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 Chicago bop towards exotic styles that transcended easy categorization. The album was released in 1965 with a distinctive sleeve design by Sun Ra, featuring an identical illustration on both sides, and no sleeve notes. Besides the leader, there's overlapping personnel at the two sessions, yet the two LP sides were somewhat incongruous, demonstrating how much the Arkestra had evolved in four years.  Side A (tracks 1–4) consists of four performances from the marathon 1960 Chicago recording session that produced dozens of tracks released over the subsequent decade on a series of Saturn releases. Two idiosyncratic works, "Tiny Pyramids" and the title track (the latter featuring a flute solo by Marshall Allen), were composed by bassist Ronnie Boykins. "Between Two Worlds," a Sun Ra original, is a short, springy cha-cha. The colorfully abstract "Music From The World Tomorrow," featuring Sun Ra on Cosmic Tone Organ and Phil Cohran on "violin-uke," is the album's revelation — a short "sound experiment" rather than a composition, hinting more than any work on the collection Sunny's future direction. 

The B-side of the album (tracks 5–8) goes back to the 1956 first Arkestra sessions, featuring Sunny's emerging "Hard Space Bop." The work is solid, and representative of the foundational years of the Sun Ra legacy. Three of the tracks had been released as singles by Saturn.  The respective sides document two early periods of Sun Ra's musical trajectory. But by the time the album was released in 1965, neither side accurately reflected what Sun Ra was offering fans on the concert stage or on new album releases, much less where his music would head as the decade continued to unfold. Compare Angels and Demons to the albums Strange Strings (recorded 1965) and Atlantis (recorded 1967-68), which sonically and stylistically are, as Sun Ra might say, "from another planet."

Details
Cat. number: 45004
Year: 2021
Notes:
Edition of 750. Track A1 + A2: recorded at either Hall Recording Company or RCA Studios, Chicago, June 1960 Track B: recorded in 1966 Pressed as a heavy weight single 70g with a die-cut picture sleeve. PERSONNEL Tracks A1 and A2 - Angels and Demonds at Play / Between Two Worlds: Sun Ra: piano, Cosmic Tone Organ, percussion Phil Cohran: trumpet (1) Nate Pryor (1) and Bo Bailey (2): trombone John Gilmore: tenor sax (1, 2,), clarinet (1,) Marshall Allen: alto sax (2), flute (1) Ronnie Boykins: bass Jon Hardy: drums (1) Robert Barry: drums (2) Art Hoyle: trumpet Pat Patrick: baritone sax Julian Priester: trombone Wilburn Green: bass Jim Herndon: tympani PERSONNEL: Track B - Spontaneous Simplicity Sun Ra: piano, Clavioline Marshall Allen: alto sax, flute, piccolo, percussion Danny Davis: alto sax, flute, alto clarinet, percussion Danny Ray Thompson: alto sax, percussion John Gilmore: tenor sax, percussion Pat Patrick: baritone sax, flute, percussion Robert Northern: French horn Bernard Pettaway: trombone Ali Hassan: trombone Teddy Nance: trombone Robert Cummings: bass clarinet, percussion Ronnie Boykins: bass Clifford Jarvis: drums Lex Humphries: drums Nimrod Hunt [Carl S. Malone]: hand drums James Jacson: Ihnfinity (log) drum All tracks produced by Sun Ra, recorded 1966 All titles composed by Sun Ra © Enterplanetary Koncepts (BMI) Tape transfers by Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive Digital restoration by Michael D. Anderson and Irwin Chusid