Sun Ra

Blinding Sun Ra reissue, finding Ra on his newly acquired Crumar Mainman synth (with early drum machine!) in stellar 1978 recordings from the same Italian sessions that birthed ‘Disco 3000’ and ‘The Sound Mirror’  Well known to Ra disciples, but not as much to everyone else who stands by his catalogue and doesn’t know where to start, ‘Media Dream’ is a massive highlight of Sun Ra’s fecund period circa 1977 and 1980 - the peak of his output of new LPs.   Recorded live sometime in January 1978, the album is really most distinguished by Ra’s inimitable use of the Crumar Mainman keyboard, which was then - and still is - a rare model of “string synthesiser” that was only manufactured between the 60s and ’84. It captivatingly lights up the whole LP, from the super dark and grungy blasts that open with ‘Saturn Research’ thru its application as bubbling groove box underlining Ra’s hieroglyphic riffs and Michael Ray’s sharp trumpet in ‘Constellation’, to the wigged out blatz in ‘Year of the Sun’, before spiralling out into gobsmacking double helixes of synth and trumpet and collapsing into alien squabble on the title tune.  A legendary wig-flipper, this!