Sensational price for easily the most outstanding release on RSD 2025, imperiously superseding Shandar’s selection of edits. 

The Arkestra at its magnificent peak, in its very first performances outside North America (complete with dancers, light-shows, and psychedelic projections of New York and Chicago, moon rockets, Egyptian Gods and plumed African warriors).
‘Plenty of fiery avant-garde action,’ notes Daniel Spicer in The Quietus. ‘Much of this emanates from Ra’s solo interludes. On piano, he remains a suis generis genius of spontaneous creation, drifting from wistful melodic daydreams to sudden irruptions of violent intensity and back again.
‘Around this time, at the turn of the 1970s, he had also begun his tumultuous explorations of the recently purchased Moog synthesizer. Here, Ra approaches the synth not as an electric guitar substitute, as contemporaries such as The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Jan Hammer were then doing, but as a furious generator of alien sounds and timbres as though beamed in from some far galactic outpost. There are also group improvisations of boiling energy – often conducted by Ra using a lexicon of theatrical gestures – which forge ahead into the most coruscating free jazz, with saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen straining at the horn’s limits.
‘And yet, for all that, the shows were approachable, enjoyable and, above all, fun. Across the four hours of music, a wide range of moods are touched upon. There are the many anthemic songs and chants – such as Satellites Are Spinning and We Travel The Spaceways – delivered in vocalist June Tyson’s sweet, down-home tones with enthusiastically ragged call-and-response choruses by the rest of the Arkestra spelling out Ra’s sci-fi philosophy. There are wafting space-ballads; muscular, big band hard-bop workouts; and percussion-heavy rainforest modal jams. Each of the two evening programmes feels like a meandering yet comprehensive journey into the deepest recesses of Ra’s imagination, calling in on all his obsessions and preoccupations.’