Customer Reviews

The Creator Of The Universe (Lost Reel 1)

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If you are like me and already have a large Ra collection, this should be your next addition. A bunch of great material is still coming out, whether reissues of obscure Saturn studio albums or concert recordings. While I can truly say I've never heard a Ra recording that was less than interesting, few at this point are radically different than the Ra I've known and loved for 35 years. But as the folks who issued "The Creator Of The Universe" say, "This is a Sun Ra album like no other!", and they are right.

The first disc of this set is highlighted by an incendiary call-and-response between Ra and the Arkestra, recorded in performance in 1971. I've never heard anything like it, either on the 50 or so Ra LPs and CDs in my collection or during my years of experiencing Ra in concert. This-- as well as the bulk of the disc 1 material-- is the "outside" Ra, beloved to many of us, but probably not the place to start for the uninitiated.

Disc 2 is a recording of a Ra lecture at UC Berkeley from the same year. The topics are weighty, but the touch is light, demonstrating Ra's love for wordplay and his use of humor in approaching personal and societal issues that are really quite profound. Though you may not cue this one up often, it is a great companion to Ra's musical output.

This set is a must for the Ra collector, but the newly curious should look elsewhere, perhaps the "Montreux Concert" for a particularly broad Ra experience.

This is a very special 2-CD set that is part of the Lost Reel Collection, which is an ongoing series of releases from a variety of sources.

Disc one is a 1971 concert in a San Francisco warehouse and includes three untitled selections, Discipline, Satellites are Spinning and Enlightenment. As a sign of the (bootlegging) times, the tape runs out during Enlightenment, but that snafu does not take away from the intriguing performance that is chronicled.

The second disc is a real gem, as it is a lecture by Sun Ra entitled, The Black Man in the Cosmos, while he was in residency at UC Berkeley. Sun Ra took a holistic approach to his classes by utilizing lectures, reading materials and musical performances.

This is a fantastic collection of truly rare performances on a variety of stages, but they aptly show the artistic genius of Sun Ra.