Heavy, spaced-out, discombobulated rubadub cut at Munchie Jackson’s Sunshine Studio in the Bronx, in the mid-1980s, with Jackie Mittoo at the controls. Junior devotes his debut recording to a richly nostalgic, entertaining set of shout outs.
All-time killer New York dancehall. It’s a must.

Fragile, dignified performances by two of Cajun music’s finest and most unusual artists, originally released on 78 in the late 1920s. French vocals accompanied by guitar or fiddle, or sometimes both. Impeccable ballads and breakdowns. Old school tip-on cover.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Diop was celebrated in Senegal for her taasu, a form of oral poetry spoken call-and-response by griot women to the rhythmic accompaniment of sabar and tama drums. Then, in 1994, she dropped this incendiary combination of taasu and her own stripped, super-charged conception of mbalax…

Top-notch quartet-jazz, feeling and brainy. MT evokes Trane — though no chordal instrument here — and Shorter (to Avishai Cohen’s Miles). There are tributes to Stevie — ‘master of the blues’ — and Ursula Le Guin. ‘It needs to be personal, meaningful, otherwise the blues can be banal. I believe it to be sacred, like a spiritual discipline.’

This is a system test record.

BB was trumpeter for Ray Charles — actually he plays a double-trumpet — who co-produced this ace LP of funky big-band jazz for his own Crossover imprint in 1974. 
Also featuring Monk’s bassist Larry Gales, drummer Clarence Johnston (who recorded some killer Blue Notes with Freddie Roach), saxophonist Herman Riley (Side Effect, Pleasure, Letta Mbulu), and guitarists Jef Lee (from various Roy Ayers projects) and Calvin Keys (Black Jazz Records).

With the fabulous Forty Days, as sampled by Tribe Called Quest for Luck Of Lucien, and by Mobb Deep etc etc…

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.

‘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.

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.

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.”

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.

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).

‘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.’