Lanquidity [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

Sun Ra

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 26, 2000)
• Original Release Date: July 17, 1978
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Evidence
• ASIN: B00004XSLJ
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #102,008 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
This 1978 session, coming relatively late in Sun Ra's creative history, is another extraordinary venture into uncharted musical terrain. As the name suggests, it's a liquid and languid musical state, from the lounge area of Ra's cosmos, but it can also be resiliently funky and subtly dissonant in ways unheard outside the orchestra's precincts. The rhythm section of electric bass, two guitars, and three drummers creates deep pulsing grooves for Sun Ra's assortment of ethereal organs and synthesizers and a horn complement of two trumpets and five reeds that are used sparingly for maximal effect. There are some elements of commercial crossover funk and even Miles Davis's electric period, but this is highly original music, an acid jazz prototype in which groove and electronica intersect with muted brass and a heady assortment of reeds and percussion. Sudden squiggles of funk guitar mix with strong improvisation from Sun Ra and his regular soloists, like saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen, who are always ready to bend the music into some new pitch zone. The lyrical title track bears a resemblance to Mingus's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," and "There Are Other Worlds" is supplemented by overdubbed "Ethnic Voices" and additional percussion and electronics, creating an eerily engaging tapestry. Recorded in a New York studio with the sound further improved by Evidence, this is unusually well recorded for Sun Ra music of the period, a warm bath in music both lush and exotic. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Underheard Record, October 16, 2000

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

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch psychedelic jazz music, April 29, 2005

By	Mark Twain "Sam" (NY) - See all my reviews

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genuine hi-fi sci-fi jazz, February 11, 2007

By	K. D. Kelly "try strangulation" (sf, ca) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.