Customer Reviews

Atlantis

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The first five tracks are fairly tame, short pieces for organ and percussion, primarily, leaving the listener utterly unprepared for the twenty-minute apocalypse that is the title track, wherein an eerie depth charge (or is it an alarm signal?) leads you on your descent into the Maelstrom. An absolutely manic organ solo grabs your body and smashes it against the ocean floor repeatedly as the world splits apart. The fainter of heart will eject the CD at this point rather than drown; the brave ones will grit their teeth or go limp and ultimately be elevated. You slowly emerge to unearthly (heavenly?) brass tones and finally drift off almost peacefully, agreeing with the voices that chant "Sun Ra/ And his band/ from Outer Space/ Have entertained you here." Too much!

This album has two halves: the first consists of 5 excellent short pieces involving Sun Ra, horns and percussion. Some of them are almost funky, a foreshadowing of the stuff Miles Davis would be doing within a few years.

The second half, and indeed the highlight of the album, is the title suite. Ra goes mad on the his "Solar Sound Organ", providing a highly dissonant solo that builds into an intense climax. (Think Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets" without all the catchy bits) Then some manic big-band playing enters, and the last minute of the suite presents a neat surprise.

This album is highly recommended to adventurous music listeners. It will appeal primarily to free jazz types, though some space rock fans will like too. Beware that the sound quality is extremely poor: sound is muffled, and during the title suite you can hear footsteps and voices in the background.

Side 1 sounds to me like Thelonious Monk on a clavinet somewhere on a moon of the planet Saturn, jamming with African drummers. It is unique music and very worthwhile in my opinion. Ra is on clavoline (it sounds a bit like an electric guitar) alongside several drummers and minimal bits of jazz horn playing. It foreshadows Ra's "discipline" series of compositions, which required players to work around rigid linear themes, but this particular set of jams is unique in atmosphere and concept.

Side 2 is a scarifying live performance (recorded at Olutjuni (sic)'s Culture Center in NYC in 1967) featuring Ra's organ playing as if in accompaniment to a horror movie. It's interesting, but Side 1 is what makes this release especially worthwhile.

Certainly there is some very good music on this album, but I've always thought this album was overated. The shorter pieces suffer from a lack of cohesiveness and ramble on a bit in a laid back, offhand way. They don't really go anywhere. The long centerpiece composition "Atlantis" is for the most part an organ workout for Ra and is by turns extremely aggressive, spacey and ultimately exhausting. There are some great passages but its just too long. I would recommend "The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Vol. 1", or the truly magical "Magic City" or "Other Planes of There" before Atlantis. Those albums all contain long compositions that are more rewarding. Heliocentric Worlds is comprised of smaller pieces that flow into one another creating in effect one long suite. I'm not saying Atlantis isn't worth having because it is, just that there are better Sun Ra albums out there that you might want to pick up first.

In early 1973 I had the rare and unique privilege of seeing and interviewing Sun Ra before I had a chance to seriously sample his significant recorded output. Both the show and the interview were remarkable spectacles. Sun Ra was one of the most unique and creative individuals of the twentieth century.

This CD underscores his creative abilities. The title track, which starts off with a long organ improvisation, is one of Ra's greatest keyboard solos--an exploration into the depths, if you will, and along with the German Free Jazz Donaueshingen sessions, his Montreaux LP on Inner city, and the recent Kahoutek comet concert CD, among his finest works, and a great place to start.

I will never forget the joy of a Ra performance. This CD comes very close to capturing that spirit.

Gary Gomes GomesCrystalx@aol.com

This album surely breaks the traditional molds of rhythm, form and tonality. For these reasons alone it is really worth a listen; however, this is not earth-shattering or out-of-this-world music. Free jazz had been around for about 6 years, and so this experiment had been done before. It is a great recording because the listener hears it against the backdrop of one's own preconceived ideas about how music should be. If I were to describe it, I would call it "Music from a Laudromat", because it harkens (especially rhythmically) to my experience sitting in a laudromat waiting for the clothes to get done in a dryer. As the dryer spins at a constant speed the clothes inside rattle against the sides of the dryer cylinder, snaps buttons and zippers clanging against the sides at an erratic non-linear pace. If one listens to it and places one's attention upon it, it becomes a very meditative and freeing experience.

This was my first introduction to the Might of Ra. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it other than I liked it. A few months later, I saw the Arkestra live and it all suddenly made sense. I was hooked and hooked deeply! No, this isn't the best starting place for Sun Ra (especially if you're coming from a 'traditional' jazz background) but for the adventuresome and openminded, this is great stuff.....SPACE IS THE PLACE

Certainly this album is a pretty impressive piece of work. Whilst not being a Jazz officianado when i do occasion into the realms of Jazz then Sun Ra is always the most exciting place to go. The music on this One Album alone could be seen as a precursor to many of the so-called ground-breaking groups to come covering many genre's. Throbbing Gristle even came to mind half way through the title track, whilst the violent interplay on Bimini is so complex that on 1st listen it may appear as nothing more than a practice in speed drumming. But wait, let your mind empty of preconceived notions of rhythm and melody and you'll suddenly find yourself making sense of the madness. Trying to follow the music on this album is an adventure in itself. Let the music take you and you'll find yourself in a mighty powerful place where Sun Ra pulls you into his fingertips as he crashes his Electric Piano through the spaceways of his mind. And all this from the 60's, my god you have to be kidding. My opinion is that Sun-Ra is from Saturn because surely no-one else on the planet ever sounded like this. Buy!

You think Pink Floyd is trippy and out there? Roger Waters and David Gilmour bow down to the great Sun Ra. That being said, Pink Floyd fans and stoners (often times one category) will love Sun Ra. In an age where Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were criticized for straying way too far away from Jazz's orgins, Sun Ra was already leaps and bounds ahead of them. Sun Ra is the apex of Avant-Garde and Experimental Jazz. To the untrained ear of those unfamiliar with Ra, this may sound uneven and sloppily composed. But you couldn't be anymore wrong. That's the genius of avant-garde art - it may seem poorly conceived on the surface, but underneath its thought out and pays close attention to details. This is one of Sun Ra's best albums, and a good place to go from after "Space Is the Place" or "Easy Listening For Intergalatic Travel" (the two starting points in your Ra enjoyment). The lack of production, minimalist and at times primative organ playing, and the very small band add to an atmosphere of the outer limits that any Space Age Pop artist couldn't dream to create. In other words, classic Ra. Not the greatest starting place to get acquainted with the genius, but a classic nonetheless.

Typical craziness from your man from Saturn. A few of the tracks here actually sound like songs while others are a bit more like noisy experiments. This may not be the best album for the first time listener. None the less this man was a genius.