Sun Ra - Excelsior Mill [Indie Exclusive, Violet vinyl]

MODERN HARMONIC

£27.34

Cat. no: LPMH8269C
Format: LP Indie Exclusive , Violet vinyl
Barcode: 090771826916
Release Date: 24 May 2024
Genre: Jazz

The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do

It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you.

Most likely you'll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. Pressed on violet vinyl! When you're Sun Ra, you don't need synthesizers to evoke apocalyptic visions and interstellar excursions. You don't even need a band. Ra is most widely known for working with various iterations of his Arkestra, but he was no stranger to unaccompanied keyboard expeditions. His discography contains solo piano albums, solo Fender Rhodes records, and solo recordings on conventional organ, the latter going as far back as his home recordings from the 1940s.

But none of those instruments ever offered Sun Ra the kind of sonic artillery that waited beneath his fngers and feet when he sat before the keyboards, pedals, and multicolored constellation of tabs controlling the Wurlitzer pipe organ. Mystic and magisterial, Ra comes off here like a cross between a demonically rifng '50s horror movie villain and a futuristic congregation leader delivering the interplanetary gospel. Brassy stabs provide the kind of punctuation that could be graphically rendered as an endless string of exclamation marks in 500-point font. String-like swoops and swirls dance across the top of the carnage, cooling the fames just enough to keep the whole thing from combusting (for a while at least) but never dousing the fery fury that Ra draws forth from the instrument.

LP Indie Exclusive , Violet vinyl Tracks: Beyond Hiroshima / Excelsior