Quantum 3:
Atlantic 273:1, p. 42
(1/94)
Hail The Sun King

Sun Ra, who died last May at age 79, was sui generis. The pianist-composer claimed origins on the planet Saturn, and for half his life led what he called his Arkestra on galactic excursions linking big bands and bop with African drum choirs and other-worldly sound mutations, introducing various ideas years before they became commonplace.

Sun Ra's maverick ways, and the elusiveness of albums released on his own El Saturn label, made him, as he claimed, the King of the Sub-Underground. For the past two years Evidence Music has been retrieving El Saturn collectors' items from oblivion, cleaning up their sound and correcting inaccurate annotations, and exposing in the process a great unknown jazz oeuvre of the past 40 years.

Evidence's new Sun Ra CDs span two decades of the Arkestra's voyage. Angels and Demons at Play/The Nubians of Plutonia and Fate in a Pleasant Mood/When the Sun Comes Out (each containing two original LPs) cover 1956-1963, when hard-bop orchestrations coexisted with trans-world exotica. The Magic City and Atlantis, masterpieces from 1965-1969, weave spongy electric keyboards, cross-rhythmic skeins of percussion, and raw-nerve horn solos into taut and amazingly unified collective improvisations. Soundtrack to the Film Space Is the Place, from 1972, summarizes the diverse approaches (including vocal chants and big-band covers) that made Arkestra performances the jazz equivalent of Grateful Dead concerts.

--B[ob].B[lumenthal].

[Excerpted from "Popular Music and Jazz"]

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