The LP is in the ‘Verve By Request’ series.

Ace, late-seventies set, warmly buoyant and inimitably baggy, including Space Is The Place.
Six reeds (including John Gilmore and Marshall Allen), three trumpets (including Michael Ray and Eddie Gale), two trombones (with a young Robin Eubanks), the French horn of Vincent Chancey, guitarist Dale Williams, three bassists, four percussionists, singer June Tyson and of course Ra on keyboards.

An early lyrical gem — from 1956 — mixing up big-band sonorities, ahead-of-its-time electric piano, and extra percussion.

Another unmissable Ra LP — previously impossible to find — from the same 1972 sessions as Space Is the Place. The opener Pan Afro is a modal tear-up bossed by Gilmore’s saxophone; the title track is a hugely enjoyable, side-long, Ra-led space chant.

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.

‘One thing is certain about a Sun Ra performance: You never know what to expect. Last week at the Chicago Jazz Festival, he presented a huge troupe of musicians, dancers and acrobats in a veritable circus of improvisation’ (John Litweiler, Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1988).
The entire show as originally broadcast by National Public Radio in the same year.

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.’