Customer Reviews

Lanquidity

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Moore has no idea what he's talking about. Sun Ra never had no commercial ambitions. Whatever was created by him and his arkestra was personal expression, regardless of how many chromatic intervals there are per song (a very simplistic way of looking at Sun Ra's music). Lanquidity has been my favorite Sun Ra record because of its accessability. Much of Sun Ra's music just throws you alone into empty space; in Lanquidity Sun Ra keeps you company on this journey into outer space. The album's definately among Sun Ra's groovier stuff. It freaks out my mom.

I haven't heard the reissue yet, but I'm intimately familiar with the album via a second-hand tape. It's a great record that puts Ra's harmonic beauty and innovation over a laid-back "Quiet Storm" groove. It's like nothing else I've heard, quite, and it sounds entirely like 1978 to me. I've read some blockheaded reviews elsewhere that dismissed this album as watered-down Ra. It's not watered-down; it's transplanted. If you like moody R&B, or you like slowly unfolding music ala Miles Davis or Jon Hassell, or you like Sun Ra and his lovely interplanetary harmonies, you will enjoy this album.

When Carl Sagan pondered the possibility of life elsewhere in the solar system, he conjured up creatures such as a hot-air balloon-sized flying jellyfish that would float through Jupiter's blistering atmosphere propelled by sulfurous discharges. Sun Ra operates on a similar wavelength, apparently attempting to recreate what musical instruments would sound like on other worlds. "Lanquidity" is the most repeatedly listenable Ra release I've encountered (The title track for "The Magic City," for instance, an album released 13 years earlier in 1965 sounds much like a construction site hooked up to a loudspeaker) and one that easily holds its own beside Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew," Art Blakey's "Free for All" and Sonny Sharrock's "Ask the Ages." The meandering Hammond, droning horns, and occasional whale-speak and duck-honk effects give the set a malleable, dreamy complexion. "There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)" feels like a combo LSD deprogramming session and love-in taking place inside a robotic whale adrift in the deep ocean. Some of the songs even suggest a contemporary trip-hop vibe, then abruptly zoom ahead back into the future and eventually steps outside time's bounds, just looking back at the one-dimensional timeline, nothing more than a stray slug's slime trail. Like music that makes you jabber like you're Carlos Castaneda? Then this is the one.

I haven't heard the reissue yet, but I'm intimately familiar with the album via a second-hand tape. It's a great record that puts Ra's harmonic beauty and innovation over a laid-back "Quiet Storm" groove. It's like nothing else I've heard, quite, and it sounds entirely like 1978 to me. I've read some blockheaded reviews elsewhere that dismissed this album as watered-down Ra. It's not watered-down; it's transplanted. If you like moody R&B, or you like slowly unfolding music ala Miles Davis or Jon Hassell, or you like Sun Ra and his lovely interplanetary harmonies, you will enjoy this album.

This mighty cadet was so ahead of his time, he had to wait for technology to catch up to his kitchen sink ambition. Ra was using electric keybords in 1963.

By the late 1970s, the instruments he needed to blast even further were there for the buying. This is later Ra in full electric force. Lanquitity uses the keybords, and the rest of Ra's band, on funky, few chord grooves.

These allow Ra and the crew to dig in. The joy in this music--ultimately, what made Ra great was all his music was highly sophisticated fun--is in listening to these ace players interact together in the grooves. Collective soloing is a technique too little used in jazz, but this album takes full advantage-not for the sake of accidemic experimentation, but for musical adventure.

When jazz was a series of genres, Sun Ra flew the ship that shined a beam on them all.

Student Cadet class A, man your mouse and click "checkout" on this command.

Sun Ra is a musical genius. I am convinced that he has intimate knowledge of outer space. When I listened to his rendition of "Motherless Child" I could feel the struggle, mental frustration and disconnect from socity that many African Americans have felt in relation to global racism. There is a point in the song in which it sounds as though the collective manacled mind, in its intense struggle to escape its baneful condition, wonders into outer space. I urge anyone to listen to this unique interpretation.

As I listened to other music by Sun Ra on the train to work, I would close my eyes and relax. After a few weeks I started to see faint, adumbrated images in my mind. These images always started with an image of a red dot that turned into the sun. After a while these images turned into pictures of the sun over a skyline of buildings, usually by a large body of water. There were even times after I saw the sun over the skyline that I started to see flashes of jazz artists in rapid succession. I told my sister about this and she said he is probably leaving his calling card with you. You must have made a connection with him.

Listening to "Heliocentric Worlds" was a revelation to me also. I would listen to this album over and over again at night as I fell to sleep. There were a couple of times when I felt my body disappear and I blended in with the blackness around me. I thought to myself "this is what Sun Ra is doing if you listen with an open mind." He will mentally transport you to space (inner and outer space) if you listen with open heart and mind. I had no expectations as to what would happen to me when I started listening to his music. I did not even consider the fact that anything would happen to me when I listened. I just was listening to enjoy the music.

Another time when I listened to "Heliocentric Worlds" I felt a burst of energy at the bottom of my spine. I felt it move up my spine and burst inside my body as thougth there were stars inside of me. I felt as though I was a universe with stars and satalites floating around inside of me. This only lasted a few seconds but it was intense.

I don't mean to sound delusional and New Agey. I don't even mean to exaggerate. I did have these experiences and can only attribute them to listening to Sun Ra's music. I believe it has great spiritual power.

This record splits Sun Ra fans down the middle: some of them like it and others hate it. After all, there's "Where Pathways Meet", which sounds like some detective TV show theme, there's some new age-style business on some tracks, and what's that nutty wah-wah pedal doing on the record? Mr. Ra definitely breaks from his usual sonics on "Lanquidity", so why can't I stop playing this record? Maybe after all is said and done its' still a very solid package of great jazz music. His dreamy keyboards, especially the Crumar synthesizer, create gorgeous tapestries of sound that truly attain an effortlessly intergalactic world for your ears. Although the music is low-key and dreamy I return to this one again and again, and the wah-wah pedals eventually make sense!

There may be comparisons as to what this music sounds 'like' but like must of Ra's work, it defies boundaries. These tracks are perfect for late night listening. The songs, beginning with track 1, but particularly tracks 2-4, build into a collage of slow grooving, imaginative music which ends with the hypnotic "There Are Other Worlds(They have not told you of)". This may be atypical Ra, according to some, but it IS 'must have' music for the mind.

Sun Ra is really one of a kind in Jazz, he was a pioneer for Avant Garde just as much as he was a colourful and absurd personality that dressed in Exotic or futuristic clothes and claimed he was born on another planet. By most accounts he was born as Herman Sonny Blount 1914 in Birmingham, AL and came to promise in the 50's with his exprimental music that would become an unique take on Avant Garde Jazz soon enough. Few Jazz critics ever took him serious cause of his personality and lifestyle and his music was very controvercial for Jazz Purists during his whole recording history. In particular the album "Atlantic" from 1967 released just 2 years prior to Miles Davis "Bit*es" Brew" when he would be exploring mythical music from the past in what was an indescribable sound of drums and organs. Regardless of Sun Ra was exploring music from the past or futuristic space music, his music is diffrent then anything else and it's both creative and odd. Sun Ra's only interest in life was music, he would be recording or playing with his band from morning to night and for a man like him he made a huge catalogue of music, some really good music, some less interesting but always worth to check out.

"Lanquidity" from 1978, Released about 10 years after the Avant Garde/Fusion hype that came in the 60's is perhaps Sun Ra's best album and most accessible aswell. Apart from most musicians Sun Ra's creative peak never ended, he would still be recording music to the last years of his life but around 1978 he was recording some of the best music of his life. "Lanquidity" is a recommended album in the sense that it isn't as absurd or unpenetratable as some of his music. It's very meliodic with an almost trance feeling. It's a Fusion inspired Jazz-Funk album with 5 songs that are quite coherant and as usual his big band appearence makes the sound of it very fascinating and grand. Opener and title a midtempo track almost sounds like in a trance, Sun Ra plays his electric piano while saxophonist John Gilmore jumps in with a great solo and all of the others deliver the best of their exotic instruments. All brilliantly produced and coherant. "Where Pathways Meet" is quite diffrent, it's a funky number in fast pace with Trumpet in focus. This one is not as revolutionary as some of the other music, but a real swagger. The third song is really beautiful, it's called "That's How I Feel" one of my personal favorite Sun Ra compositions. It feautures horns and a great electric piano melody that goes on for the entire song. A Bit simular to the opener. "Twin Stars Of Thense" is brilliant aswell, it's also slightly funky with both piano and horn solos. Less meliodic, but nice Fusion recording. "There are Other Worlds" feauture the voice of June Tyson and with some occasional horn sound here and there but the song itself is very mysterious, ending up like a long trance more then an actual song. But this was the whole point cause Sun Ra wants you to pay attention to small details in his music and feeling it's groove. Most songs here are about 6 to 10 minutes so they aren't as long as some of Miles David Fusion recordings, thus it's easy to get into the album + it's mostly meliodic and accessable to most people.

Needless to say, This is perhaps Sun Ra's best album and a good way to get to know him. The man, the myth the legend Sun Ra who by most people atleast recognozed as a musical genius, a bandleader, composer, producer and extremly multitalented and creative musician. In my oppinion, one of the most fascinating persons in Music History. If you're further interested in his personality and music there are some documentaries available that covers some of his life and plenty of good albums and articles to check out too.

This 1978 album is good for someone whose ears are not yet ready for Sun Ra's farthest-out voyages in the key of space. Missing are the atonal dissonance of the Heliocentric sixties and the chanting over polyrhythmic percussion of the Astro Black seventies. The smoothly executed jazz of Liquidity mostly features Ra on electric piano backed by the horns of the arkestra. The audio quality is very good, like his studio albums of the late 1980s. The harmony is mild and the tempo is sleepy. If you like Weather Report or Return to Forever, then you will like this album.