Three previously unreleased transmissions: two salvaged from the hallowed tapes of Strange Strings, his hardcore 1966 masterwork; whilst Calling Planet Earth / We’ll Wait For You — from the same time as Universe In Blue, five years later — is twenty-four minutes from a triumphant show at Slug’s, featuring June Tyson and heavy Ra synths on two Arkestra evergreens.

From 1964, with Pharoah Sanders sitting in for John Gilmore (away working with Paul Bley, Andrew Hill and Art Blakey); also flautist Harold Murray and the brilliant bassist Alan Silva. The debut of The Shadow World.

Late-sixties recordings from Sun Studios — chez Ra — in Philadelphia.
The first-ever release of six works; plus revivals of 1950s classics Sunology and Ancient Aiethiopia; and an early treatment of Why Go To The Moon.

Fastidiously designed facsimiles of two pamphlets which accompanied early Sun Ra albums; and two substantial publications more than a decade later by Infinity Inc./Saturn Research.
Issued in 1957 by the Boston-based Transition label, his debut LP Jazz By Sun Ra contained a beautiful booklet, now as prized as the LP itself, with rare photographs and a selection of poems and proclamations, as well as the personnel and recording credits.
Ra’s Jazz In Silhouette was released two years later on Saturn Records, coming with a mimeographed, folded, unstapled booklet. The CvsD version folds this slim pamphlet of poetry into a slipcover with a classic photo portrait of Ra by Thomas “Bugs” Hunter on the back.
Perhaps Ra’s best known book of poetry, The Immeasurable Equation is restored after the original Infinity Inc./Saturn Research version, published in Chicago in 1972, and distributed widely by the Arkestra, often from the bandstand. It features more than sixty of Ra’s poems.
Finally, perhaps the rarest of Ra’s poetry books is Extensions Out: Immeasurable Equation Vol. II, which was also published by Infinity Inc./Saturn Research. This 8.5 x 11-inch book is a massive compendium of more than 130 poems, very much in step with the mimeo poetry publications of its era — simple staple binding, one-sided pages — featuring three photographs of artwork by Ayé Aton, a close ally of Ra’s in this, the period of the Arkestra classic Space Is The Place, on which Aton plays percussion. Great care was taken to reproduce the special textured cover of this highly sought after book.

In 1961 Sun Ra took off from Chicago – where he had established the Arkestra, his dedicated ensemble and the vehicle for his mission to better the planet – and with a scaled-down version of the band he landed in NewYork. Their first recording session was in Newark in October of that year. The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra, recorded for the Savoy label, is a beautiful document of the material they’d honed during a long residency at the Wonder Inn at the end of the Chicago period. Among tracks left in the vault from that day in the studio were these two great ballads sung by Ricky Murray, both of them redolent of the bright popcraft that had long been part of Ra’s repertoire, with classic Afrofuturist themes of navigating outer space and altered destiny cloaked in sweet songs with tart arrangements.
“Marshall Allen especially liked playing I Struck A Match On The Moon,” recalls Ricky, “because he got a chance to light up a cigarette while we were singing.”

The definitive edition, with much better sound than any of the rather garbled ESP iterations.
‘Recorded on May 18, 1966 at St Lawrence University, Potsdam, NY, Nothing Is…Completed & Revisited has Ra, who was at the time only just beginning to perform on the US college circuit, testing the water with a programme drawn from several stages of his work with the Arkestra. There are space chants (Outer Spaceways Incorporated, Next Stop Mars, Second Stop Is Jupiter, We Travel The Spaceways), a salute to the swing era (Velvet, from the 1959 Saturn masterpiece Jazz In Silhouette), far-out material such as the sixteen minute version of Outer Nothingness from the 1965 ESP album The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra Vol. l, and trippy exotica such as reed player Marshall Allen’s oboe feature Exotic Forest, here given its first airing on disc.
‘The twelve-piece band is killer, with Allen, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, baritone saxophonist Pat Patrick and trombonists Ali Hassan and Teddy Nance propelled by the A-team anchors Ronnie Boykins on bass and tuba and Clifford Jarvis on drums. Everyone, including Ra on clavioline and piano, is on top form’ (Chris May, All About Jazz).

The Arkestra toured Europe in early 1983; then made its way to Cairo. It played a number of concerts during April at Il Capo/Il Buco, before recording superb studio versions of the Ragab compositions Egypt Strut and Dawn, at El Nahar Studios in Heliopolis the following month, featuring Salah Ragab on congas.
For the original release of this LP, the Greek label Praxis added Ramadan and Oriental Mood from the Cairo Jazz Orchestra album Egypt Strut; and another new CJO recording, A Farewell Theme, composed by Ragab upon the death of president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970.
This first ever official reissue features previously unseen photos and new liner notes by Hartmut Geerken and Paul Griffiths.

‘Recorded at several locations over several years — including the legendary Squat Theater in NYC) — including everything from Ra’s sci- fi synthesizer insanity, Marshall Allen’s skronking sax, the knockout Arkestra vocal They Plan To Leave, and so much more. Reissued for the first time since its original release forty years ago.’

A triumphant edition of one of the most implacable, mysterious, rumbustiously creative albums in the entire Saturn catalogue.
The three tracks comprising the original LP are remastered from tape, doing away with the distortion which has dogged all previous issues. The four additional recordings here are previously unreleased, including two more from the first sessions, and a live performance circa 1967, with Ra leading strange strings on clavinet, and finally a demonstration by Ra of the ‘plaintive’ expressiveness of the Ukrainian bandura.
With excellent notes, including a new essay by David Toop.

‘When I say space music, I’m dealing with the void, because that is of space, too; but I’m dealing with the outer void rather than the inner void, because somehow man is trapped into playing roles into the haven or heaven of the inner void… the word space is a synonym for a multi-dimension of different things other than what people might at present think it means. So I leave the word space open, like space is supposed to be.’

‘If you play it right time, you’re wrong,’ Sun Ra once instructed his Arkestra. ‘I told you, it’s designed for sound.’

From the original Saturn Research publicity flyer for Strange Strings: ‘Too many people are following the past. In this new space age this is dangerous… It is no accident that those who die are said to have passed since those who have PASSED are PAST.’

‘In 1971 Ra accepted a lectureship at University of California, Berkeley, teaching a class titled The Black Man and the Cosmos. This course of study was held in some secrecy, apparently open exclusively to Black students who were strictly forbidden to record the lectures. Ra’s assistants did, however, document the sessions, and some of these recordings have made their way to YouTube. The incredible half-hour of Berkeley Lecture presented here, however, is previously unknown, extracted from the Creative Audio Archive’s extensive holdings. It presents Ra walking his students through a series of wonderful paradoxes and riddles, the sound of his chalk on the chalkboard serving as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on or complementing his highly creative pedagogy. At the end of the lecture, Ra performs two musical demonstrations, the first a piano version of the Arkestra classic Love in Outer Space, followed by a blistering 16-minute solo on the Moog synthesizer.’