Customer Reviews

Angels & Demons / Nubians of Plutonia

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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!

"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.

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.

Unlike most of the other reviews, this review is written from the perspective of a relative newcomer to Sun Ra's music who is not a newcomer to jazz. About ten years ago when I began getting into jazz, I heard a snippet of Sun Ra's music that was some of the most raucous and chaotic noise I had ever heard. At that point, I basically wrote Sun Ra off as anyone I would ever want to listen to again. Ten years and thousands of jazz albums later, I have finally returned to Ra in search of new and interesting sounds. I was only disturbed to find out what I had been missing all these years!

As, it seems, with many of Sun Ra's cds released by Evidence, this cd combines two LPs. The first, Angels and Demons at Play, combines some really haunting piano by Sun Ra with some incredible saxophone solos by John Gilmore. There are a lot of spots in which the band plays together as a unit or plays a series of alternating lines in response to one another. The harmonies and general playing of the band simultaneously convey an odd sense of spookiness with a feeling of real excitement about the music. Considering the primitive equipment on which this was recorded, the sound is very good.

The Nubians of Plutonia combines, as the title suggests, complex African rhythms with the spacey melodies characterisitc of the Arkestra. Though the recording quality dulls the drumming somewhat (it is better on some tunes than others), the rhythms drive the other players to creative heights that exceed those on Angels and Demons, creating an unexpected combination of earthiness and spaceyness. As a newbie to Ra, this album--which is not nearly as free or dissonant as a lot of his other music--is highly recommended, especially to those who are already jazz fans and in search of new and creative sounds.

This release covers various sessions from the late 50's and 1960 and shows the Arkestra in transition from their strange version of swing to the even stranger sound explorations of mid to late sixties sessions.

This was one of my first intros to Mr. Ra and in retrospect, it was likely the best place to start. Spacey, swinging, primal, great vocal chanting, dark, brooding, lively: this one has it all, from one of the underappreciated masters of modern music. If you are at all curious, buy it, you won't be dissapointed (unless you have no taste, in which case you likely don't even know who Sun Ra was, and are not reading this!)

This is one of my favorite Sun Ra releases. It covers so much ground, from swingin' big band nuggets to stretched-out, esoteric sketches, with all sorts of mummy-walking delights in between. Very recommended, even as a starting point for those curious about this Saturnian genius/trickster...

This is great music. I bought this CD after hearing an NPR blurb on Sun Ra and his music, during which they played an exerpt of Aithiopia, which really got my attention. The CD exceeded my expectations. The sound is very exotic (not in a kitchy Martin Denny/Les Baxter exotica way). It's like nothing else I've heard. Listen to the sample of "Angles and Demons at Play," and enjoy. The only oddity is the inclusion of "Urnack," which is a little mainstream and out of place on this CD. The sound quality could be better, but the low-fi kind of adds to the atmosphere. Enjoy-

The songs are very well represented by the title of these two LP recordings. It is strange and exciting, but not far out in space. It has a more ancient egypt in your mind quality. The recording quality is not the best in fidelity, which is only a little distracting. They needed more mic's.