Back in the 1990s men were, apparently, from Mars and women from Venus. However, one famous interloper came from the sixth rock from the sun decades before the book. Herman Blount changed his name to Sun Ra and the Arkestra was born. Amazingly the Arkestra sailed on and we were fortunate enough to have seen it in full flight in Gateshead back in pre-covid days when the then Sage still had a Jazz Festival. It was a wail(!) of a time. Big frocks and bright tunes!
Herman may have ascended back to the stars in 1993 but his legacy lives
on and he is the driving influence of Afrofuturism, one of the major themes in
the works of stars like Idris Ackamoor, Kamasi Washington and Thundercat. This
recognition in turn drives the demand for hitherto unheard works, including
this live album which has been exhumed and is released on LP and CD on Record
Store Day this year (April 20 for LP. Like the egg of the audiophile curate both the music and
the recording are good in parts and not so good in others. Parts still sound
bafflingly avant-garde today, whilst others display a swing band in full voice
showing Ra’s love for the music Herman grew up listening to, predominantly
Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington. Even when Ra plays around with the
format and various parts of the band seem totally detached and heading in
different directions his roots still show through.
The opener, New Beginnings, is
well positioned and well titled to raise a number of immediate concerns. It is
a loose collection of flute lines, sporadic drumming, almost furtive sax and a
brief rolling bass line. It sounds, unfortunately, as if it were recorded far,
far away and is only marginally above bootleg quality. Similar concerns exist
as we roll into View From Another
Dimension, which is led by a repeated riff on the hand drums before Ra’s
glistening keyboards take over making the sorts of sounds that were big in the ‘70s
and we are readying for take-off. It becomes a joust between keys and Richard
Williams’ earthquake bass playing before the horns join in. This is detached
free-form blowing, without a safety net, with horns and drums probing and
challenging.
Visitor’s Approach has us in much more familiar territory. A few
more of those 70s organ sounds turn into a swinging riff and no matter how hard
the band blow and the corners they attempt to turn with the arrangements, this
is still firmly anchored in swing. The solos owe more to Coltrane and other ‘60s
iconoclasts but there is a solid reliable pulse and some of the crowd sound
overjoyed in their whoops and hollers at being caught in the full face blast of
this band.
Ankhnaton has a similar feel with a solid groove behind freer soloing
but there is still a snap and bounce to the music. It’s taking us places but we
haven’t lost sight of the ground. Some of the trumpet playing raises the roof
and reaches a pitch that only Lassie can here, and at times the sound is a
little muddy with the drums sounding especially rough, however, the energy
shines through. We get a break from all this futurism for Rose Room, a 1917 composition that Ellington recorded in 1932 and
it sounds of its era though this is a bright and joyful rendition. It loses
wind from its sales with Ra’s organ solo, a slump from the drive of the horns
that have powered the opening five minutes and it’s good to hear them come
rushing back in after the leader’s solo.
Moonship Journey opens with organ and chanting before some meaty
tenor playing from Gilmore. It’s another piece of strutting, swinging rhythm
and blues which he wails wildly over, punching holes in the sky and playing
around over and through the rest of the band as they sing manically away like
an old-fashioned revival. The chanting returns and we are again implored to
‘Get ready for the moonship journey……’ Velvet
closes out the 1977 section of our programme. The band are in full flow,
Gilmore’s soloing is ferocious but the organ playing is weak in the face of all
this fury.
Back in 1976 we open with Calling
Planet Earth & The Shadow World. We
are further out now than we have hitherto been. The first half of the piece is
challenging disconnected wailing from across the band before a propulsive
effort from the drummers add some structure. The whole piece switches between
sections of unbridled individual free blowing and drum driven charges. Possibly
not to everyone’s taste.
Theme of the Stargazers gives us heavy duty organ that could be from a
piece of sci-fi dystopia and more chanting and a mind bending guitar solo. It
leads into Space is the Place with
its joyous chanting, the band low down in the mix behind them though there is
space for some low down clarinet and baritone sax. This was part of the encore
so both audience and band are in celebratory mood by this point in proceedings.
Playing on the audience’s good mood the band indulge in three minutes of
intergalactic vocal gibberish from trumpeter Akh El Tabah before the handclaps
and chanting of Greetings from The 21st
Century takes us home. The second disc of the 2 CD set seems to be an audio
record of a visual event and you probably had to be there to get the most out
of it. Whilst the music is great on the first disc, the second needs the
dancers, the outfits and the bonhomie of a lubricated audience during the best
part of the evening to really cut through.
I was concerned about the recording quality and some of the music the
first time I listened to this album but it overpowers those anxieties on
subsequent listens. My advice is play the first disc twice, play it loud and
set your ears to fun. It’s not as strange a journey as you might fear, after
all it’s only 1,566,137,481 kilometres to Saturn. Dave
Sayer
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