Solar Flair
Incredible lost studio project and two stunning unheard concerts testify to jazz game-changer’s mind-blowing genius. By Charles Waring
Sun Ra
Inside The Light World: Sun Ra Meets The OVC ★★★★
Strut STRUT 288 (2LP, CD) Sun Ra At The Showcase: Live in Chicago 1976-1977 ★★★★
Jazz Detective (2LP, 2CD)
In the year that marks current Arkestra leader Marshall Allen’s momentous centenary, music archivists have exhumed two significant archaeological finds that capture his former leader, jazz mystic Sun Ra, in studio and live settings. Arguably, the paramount discovery is Inside The
Light World, Ra’s collaboration with Bill Sebastian, a boffin-like inventor who patented satellite designs to fund his groundbreaking Outer Space Visual Communicator (OVC), an apartment-sized fractal light projector controlled by a touch-sensitive keyboard.
After initially hooking up for live shows in the late 70s, Ra and Sebastian went into the studio together in 1986, when the latter filmed the Arkestra spontaneously running through a series of tunes against Ovc-generated psychedelic backdrops. The session resulted in two promotional videos sold on VHS cassettes at Ra’s live shows, though until now, the audio recordings have never seen daylight.
The OVC performances were never earmarked for an LP release but now, dusted down and spruced up, function as a fantastic album-length showcase spotlighting some of Ra’s best-known pieces. Though sadly, we can’t see Sebastian’s OVC machine interacting with the Arkestra, the music, newly edited and remixed from the original 24-track master tape, is astonishing in terms of both its sonic fidelity and performance quality. To accommodate Sebastian’s light displays, Ra intentionally left a lot of space in the music, an approach that results in elongated grooves with fewer band solos that allow the music to breathe, imbuing it with a freer, uncongested quality.
The blithe, Latin-tinged Sunset On The Nile and percussion-propelled Love In Outer Space show the Arkestra at their most serene. Even slinkier is the mellow Stardust From Tomorrow featuring June Tyson’s soulfully husky lead vocals. These tracks and others like them on the album reveal that Ra’s wilder, more outré side is conspicuously absent from the polished and highly accessible Inside The Light World. Indeed, such is its mellow charm that the album has the potential to attract listeners who were previously wary of the Arkestra’s more outré recordings.
In sharp contrast, Sun Ra At The Showcase, which combines two unreleased mid-to-late 70s concert recordings taped in a small Chicago jazz club, exudes a wild, untamed quality.
The Arkestra is in electrifying form, serving a mixture of organ-led swing (Rose Room), eerie synth soundscapes (View From Another Dimension), and unhinged acapella vocal experiments (Ebah Speaks In Cosmic Tongue). Most arresting is the unearthly The Shadow World, an engulfing storm of noise where Marshall Allen’s squally saxophone shrieks are juxtaposed with Ra’s manic morse code-like synth bleeps. The album’s crowning glory is a gloriously dissonant rendition of Ra’s signature number, Space Is The Place, lit up by Dale Williams’ interstellar electric guitar, which sounds like it’s beamed from some distant world far beyond this one.
In addition to being available as exclusive Record Store Day limited edition double-vinyl releases, both these Sun Ra albums – enhanced by illuminating and copious liner notes – will be available on general release in CD format. Both amount to buried treasure guaranteed to expand our awareness of the man born Herman Blount.
Sun Ra At The Showcase exudes a wild, untamed quality