Sun Ra Stray Voltage (2-CD)

This is Triple-A Ra: bold, aggressive, adventurous.
These tracks capture Ra's electronic forays in the 1970s and 1980s. The Arkestra makes the occasional guest appearance, but Ra takes center stage - less composing music than painting soundscapes with electronic keyboards.
In the collection “Stray Voltage”, Ra is not so much composing music as painting soundscapes with electronic keyboards. Ra doesn't just play these consoles - he attacks, conjures and hammers them. He turns them upside down and transports them to places where they don't belong. Sometimes they break under his attack. He steers them into the zone of intimacy and struggle. They emit hums, buzzes, bumps and squiggles, topped off with explosions. Ra's repertoire includes feedback, distortion, torrents and mysterious beeps from distant planets. With the press of a button, Ra could trigger an acoustic apocalypse.
These performances may sound like they were created by machines, but there was a robed wizard at the controls. Ra transforms these musical circuits into compressors and transformers, dynamos and turbines. He updates George Antheil for the space age.
These works also have the character of soundtracks for non-existent movies. There is suspense and mystery, chaos and disorientation. There are ominous crescendos, futuristic premonitions and thematic non sequiturs. Animation, science fiction, surrealist noir - listen to these works with your eyes closed or in a darkened room and imagine the action.
On these tracks, music is redefined, science is reinterpreted - and there are journeys into cosmic darkness. Some call it noise. Noise can also be music. It may not sound like earthly music, but that's because space pilot Sun Ra wanted to take you on a pan-galactic excursion, for which he created the mixtape.

Sun Ra

Sun Ra

Sun Ra was an American experimental and avant-garde jazz composer and musician (piano, organ, keyboard), poet and philosopher. He was born on 22 May 1914 as Herman'Sonny' Blount in Birmingham, Alabama and died on 30 May 1993 in his birthplace.

myth

Sun Ra was already considered a myth during his lifetime and until today as one of the most wicked jazz musicians of this world (or the Orbit?). With his very own style and innovative ideas, he polarized the critics and the audience. For some he was a brilliant innovator, for others a charlatan. However, it is undisputed that Sun Ra is one of the pioneers of free jazz.

Arkestra

His bizarre astrological sermons and philosophies made him as famous as his musical compositions and performances. In 1952 he gave up his birth name and took the name Sun Ra (Ra is the name of the ancient Egyptian sun god) and conducted an orchestra with a constantly changing line-up, the famous Arkestra. The most notable members of the Arkestra were the saxophonists John Gilmore, who in turn strongly influenced John Coltrane, and Marshall Allen, who still leads the Arkestra today. The word Arkestra was developed by Sun Ra as a connection from ark to orchestra.

Cosmic Jazz

In the 1950s, Sun Ras first developed music from swing, with which he began his career in the 1940s,'reinventing' himself by using the science fiction hype, devoting himself to space issues and giving his new sounds the label'Cosmic Jazz'. According to music critics and jazz historians, some of his best works were created during this period. Notable Sun-Ra albums of the 1950s include many Super-Sonic Jazz, Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth, Interstellar Low Ways, Angels And Demons At Play, We Travel The Spaceways and Jazz in Silhouette.

Saturn

As early as the 1950s, the eccentric began wearing strange costumes and headdress in Egyptian style. He claimed he came from the planet Saturn and developed an artificial figure of lyrical poetry and'cosmic' philosophies preaching peace and consciousness. Unlike many black musicians of his generation, he rarely talked about controversial topics. He preferred to make music while the ensemble of musicians who worked with him and toured with him was constantly changing.

The Sixties, 70s and beyond

In the 1960s, Sun Ras music became increasingly experimental with a tendency towards chaos. During this period his popularity reached its peak when Beat Generation and Psychedelic Rock discovered Sun Ra for themselves.

During the 1970s and beyond, the music of Sun Ra and the Arkestra developed in conventional directions, but still highly eclectic and energetic. With the singer June Tyson he brought jazz standards to the stage in a captivating way and began to process parts of Walt Disney's music from the Disney films. In the late 1980s, the Arkestra even gave a concert in Disney World.

Sun Ra has recorded over 100 albums from 1956 to 1993. Some were released on his own label El Saturn and many others under the name Sun Ra & His Arkestra and numerous variations of them (Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra, Sun Ra & His Myth Science Arkestra, etc.).