Angels & Demons / Nubians of Plutonia

Sun Ra | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 25, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Evidence
• ASIN: B0000014KH
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,585 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Tiny Pyramids

2. Between Two Worlds

3. Music From The World Tomorrow

4. Angels And Demons At Play

5. Urnack

6. Medicine For A Nightmare

7. A Call For All Demons

8. Demon's Lullaby

9. Plutonian Nights

10. The Golden Lady

11. Star Time

12. Nubia

13. Africa

14. Watusa

15. Aiethopia

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Discover Sun Ra, March 3, 2002

By 

Ed Luhrs (Long Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Angels & Demons / Nubians of Plutonia (Audio CD)

This is a great place to start if you're discovering Sun Ra. Another album I'd strongly suggest is "Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth/Interstellar Low Ways."

Sun Ra has made a huge number of recordings with his Arkestra... His albums range from adventurous to downright insane. This particular album and the other one I mentioned contain a very pleasing balance of all the things that make Sun Ra so much fun: the big band, the swing, the rumba, the wild orchestrations and rhythms, the improvisations, and the overall "interplanetary funkmanship" of which George Clinton once sang.

My first Sun Ra album was actually a wild one: "Other Planes of There." I really like it, along with another adventurous title "Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy/Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow." There are a number of these wilder examples of free jazz in his catalogue, and there are also more conventional albums.

My recommendation is to begin with the more conventional albums, because they offer plenty of fun insanity to begin with. "Angels & Demons at Play/The Nubians of Plutonia" is a particular favorite of mine. If you can get a hold of a copy, check it out!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Varied Sessions, Consistently Adventurous, October 23, 2000

By 

Scott McFarland (Manassas, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angels & Demons / Nubians of Plutonia (Audio CD)

"Angels and Demons" is a short 8-song collection (more an "EP" than an "LP") that shows Ra's Chicago-era Arkestra doing some of their best work, moving from colorful big-band music (tracks 5-8) to more idiosynchratic music that reflected Ra's belief is cosmology (tracks 1-4).

"Nubians" is a heavily percussive LP that influenced Coltrane among others. The recording quality on it varies from good to so-so. There are some wonderful compositions on it and many lengthy moments of drum-fueled ambience - "global trance" - that sound contemporary today, and were extraordinary for the late 1950's.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars On the cusp of transition, January 10, 2002

By 

Andrew R. Golden (Redwood City, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Angels & Demons / Nubians of Plutonia (Audio CD)

I love albums by performers who are in the midst of transitions. Think about the Beatles albums: Rubber Soul and Revolver. They were in the midst of the transiton that freed up their playing, yet they were still remained connected to their roots. That is what Angels and Nubians is like in the Sun Ra catalogue. It is suspended in the middle of a big change of direction from a tighter big band sound to free jazz. It is very complex in mood and is really groovy to boot. A great intro to Sun Ra.