Originally released in 1970, Continuation
contains a handful of experimental small group tracks recorded at the
Sun Studio in 1968 along with two tracks with the full Arkestra
recorded live at The East in Brooklyn, New York in 1969.
Side A begins with “Biosphere Blues,” a typically spaced-out blues, taken at a relaxed, almost somnambulant tempo. Interestingly, John Gilmore is probably playing drums on this home recording. After Ra’s piano introduction, Wayne Harris takes a nice solo on trumpet, his tone is warm and mellow, his note choices exquisite. Next up, Ali Hassan takes a single tasteful chorus on trombone. Then, Pat Patrick jumps in with an incongruously aggressive solo on baritone saxophone before giving way to Ra’s jaunty piano. A swelling space chord ends the piece with an odd dissonance. “Intergalaxtic Research” sounds as every bit as alien and forbidding as its title. Robert Barry plays the booming “lightning drum” with James Jacson on log drum and other unidentified percussionists who construct throbbing, asymmetrical cross-rhythms while Art Jenkins does his bit on space voice. Ra twiddles with his space organ and clavinet like a mad scientist, emitting random blasts of noisy timbres, dense, lurching chords, or rapidly spinning constellations of notes. This is a wonderfully strange piece.
The presence of Tommy Hunter and his echo-echo-echo machine on “Earth Primitive Earth” and “New Planet” makes me think these tracks were recorded prior to 1968. In fact, the overall ambience (and massively increased hiss) sounds like some of the Choreographer’s Workshop recordings (but this might just be wishful thinking). Both pieces pit Ra’s echoing piano against a skittering flute choir. On “Earth Primitive Earth,” Hunter plays some kind of metal scraper quite near the microphone, making for an unsettling, spooky atmosphere. “New Planet” takes the echo thing to a whole other level and Robert Cummings turns in another spectacular solo on bass clarinet (I am really starting to appreciate what a great player Cummings is on that most difficult and unwieldy instrument). Incidentally, both of these tracks appeared on the 1989 compilation CD, Out There a Minute (Blast First), although “Earth Primitive Earth” was slightly edited and re-titled “Cosmo Enticement” and “New Planet” was re-titled “Song of Tree and Forest,” presumably at the request of Sun Ra himself.
Side B contains the nearly continuous nineteen-minute live concert segment from 1969, and it’s a corker. “Continuation To” opens with the Arkestra already in full flight over sultry African percussion but Ra soon takes over with a roiling piano solo, full of booming left hand chords and scampering right hand clusters. After bringing things back down a bit, Akh Tal Ebah extemporizes on trumpet while Ra hints at ballad forms and hand percussion gurgles nervously in the background. Suddenly Ra produces a bouncy, repetitive figure and bass and drums join in for some good, old fashioned swinging. Ebah, a newcomer to the band since Sun Ra’s relocation to Philadelphia in the fall of 1968, manages to hold his own amidst the shifting musical landscapes and things really start to heat up when the Arkestra enters with big angular space chords, full of wiry clarinets and blatting trombones. But just as Boykins begins to solo, the track cuts off. “Jupiter Festival” picks up with the end of Boykins’s bass solo and he quickly moves to the fast walking to introduce “Second Stop is Jupiter.” Ra joins in and the Arkestra chants, climaxing with “all out for Jupiter!” A massive space chord erupts which melts into manic group improvisation. Gilmore emerges from the din with a lengthy, super-intense tenor saxophone solo, full of “sheets-of-sound” flurries of notes, heroically over-blown honks and squeals, and impossible multi-register leaps. Sun Ra prods things along with more furious piano, conducting brief entrances and exits of musicians while Gilmore continues to wail. The music finally simmers down a bit with the various horns exhaustedly sighing and moaning but with Boykins agitatedly scraping away with the bow. At one point, there is a tense, held note before the return of the busy piano figures after which screaming clarinets provide contrast against some sweetly melodious alto sax and rippling brass, with Jarvis propulsively pounding away in free rhythm. This deliciously complex texture continues on for some minutes before abruptly cutting off. Argh!
Nevertheless, Continuation is another fascinating album from a fertile, if spottily documented, period in Ra’s career and well worth hearing.
Side A begins with “Biosphere Blues,” a typically spaced-out blues, taken at a relaxed, almost somnambulant tempo. Interestingly, John Gilmore is probably playing drums on this home recording. After Ra’s piano introduction, Wayne Harris takes a nice solo on trumpet, his tone is warm and mellow, his note choices exquisite. Next up, Ali Hassan takes a single tasteful chorus on trombone. Then, Pat Patrick jumps in with an incongruously aggressive solo on baritone saxophone before giving way to Ra’s jaunty piano. A swelling space chord ends the piece with an odd dissonance. “Intergalaxtic Research” sounds as every bit as alien and forbidding as its title. Robert Barry plays the booming “lightning drum” with James Jacson on log drum and other unidentified percussionists who construct throbbing, asymmetrical cross-rhythms while Art Jenkins does his bit on space voice. Ra twiddles with his space organ and clavinet like a mad scientist, emitting random blasts of noisy timbres, dense, lurching chords, or rapidly spinning constellations of notes. This is a wonderfully strange piece.
The presence of Tommy Hunter and his echo-echo-echo machine on “Earth Primitive Earth” and “New Planet” makes me think these tracks were recorded prior to 1968. In fact, the overall ambience (and massively increased hiss) sounds like some of the Choreographer’s Workshop recordings (but this might just be wishful thinking). Both pieces pit Ra’s echoing piano against a skittering flute choir. On “Earth Primitive Earth,” Hunter plays some kind of metal scraper quite near the microphone, making for an unsettling, spooky atmosphere. “New Planet” takes the echo thing to a whole other level and Robert Cummings turns in another spectacular solo on bass clarinet (I am really starting to appreciate what a great player Cummings is on that most difficult and unwieldy instrument). Incidentally, both of these tracks appeared on the 1989 compilation CD, Out There a Minute (Blast First), although “Earth Primitive Earth” was slightly edited and re-titled “Cosmo Enticement” and “New Planet” was re-titled “Song of Tree and Forest,” presumably at the request of Sun Ra himself.
Side B contains the nearly continuous nineteen-minute live concert segment from 1969, and it’s a corker. “Continuation To” opens with the Arkestra already in full flight over sultry African percussion but Ra soon takes over with a roiling piano solo, full of booming left hand chords and scampering right hand clusters. After bringing things back down a bit, Akh Tal Ebah extemporizes on trumpet while Ra hints at ballad forms and hand percussion gurgles nervously in the background. Suddenly Ra produces a bouncy, repetitive figure and bass and drums join in for some good, old fashioned swinging. Ebah, a newcomer to the band since Sun Ra’s relocation to Philadelphia in the fall of 1968, manages to hold his own amidst the shifting musical landscapes and things really start to heat up when the Arkestra enters with big angular space chords, full of wiry clarinets and blatting trombones. But just as Boykins begins to solo, the track cuts off. “Jupiter Festival” picks up with the end of Boykins’s bass solo and he quickly moves to the fast walking to introduce “Second Stop is Jupiter.” Ra joins in and the Arkestra chants, climaxing with “all out for Jupiter!” A massive space chord erupts which melts into manic group improvisation. Gilmore emerges from the din with a lengthy, super-intense tenor saxophone solo, full of “sheets-of-sound” flurries of notes, heroically over-blown honks and squeals, and impossible multi-register leaps. Sun Ra prods things along with more furious piano, conducting brief entrances and exits of musicians while Gilmore continues to wail. The music finally simmers down a bit with the various horns exhaustedly sighing and moaning but with Boykins agitatedly scraping away with the bow. At one point, there is a tense, held note before the return of the busy piano figures after which screaming clarinets provide contrast against some sweetly melodious alto sax and rippling brass, with Jarvis propulsively pounding away in free rhythm. This deliciously complex texture continues on for some minutes before abruptly cutting off. Argh!
Nevertheless, Continuation is another fascinating album from a fertile, if spottily documented, period in Ra’s career and well worth hearing.
Review from NuVoid, home of Sun Ra Sundays.
Biosphere Blues
149. [132] Sun Ra and his Astro-Infinity Arkestra
Continuation
Sun Ra (p.); Wayne Harris (tp); Ali Hassan [Al Wardlow] (tb); Pat Patrick (bars); Ronnie Boykins (b); poss. John Gilmore (d).
Sun Studio, NYC, 1968
Biosphere Blues (Ra)
The collective personnel on the Saturn jacket gives Wayne Harris and Akh Tal Ebah as the trumpet players and Ali Hassan as the trombonist (Danny Thompson is not sure who the trumpet player on this track was). Harris and Hassan were there during the late New York period; Ebah was not. No bass player is credited on Saturn, but it sounds like Boykins.
150. [133] Sun Ra (space org [Gibson Kalamazoo org]; galactone space instrument [Hohner Clavinet]; prob. Robert Barry (lightning drum); James Jacson (log drum, perc); unidentified (perc); Art Jenkins (space voice, perc).
Sun Studio, NYC, 1968
Intergalaxtic Research (Ra)
Personnel from the Saturn jacket, except Art Jenkins, whose presence was pointed out by Jacson.
151. [134] Sun Ra (p innards, sun harp, gong -1; p -2); Marshall Allen (picc -1; Jupiterian fl -2); Danny Davis (strings -1; fl -2); Robert Cummings (bcl -2); prob. John Gilmore (bells -1); poss. Tommy Hunter (scraper, perc -1; reverb).
Sun Studio, NYC, around 1968
Earth Primitive Earth (Ra) -1
New Planet (Ra) -2
Both tracks also released in 1989 on British LP and CD Blast First BFFP 42, Out There a Minute, and on Restless 71427 [CD] and Torso 33132 [LP]. On these releases, the titles were changed from "Earth Primitive Earth" to "Cosmo Enticement" (this was also edited and is shorter on the Blast First releases than on Saturn) and from "New Planet" to "Song of Tree and Forest" (slightly edited on Blast First).
"Cosmo Enticement" also appeared under that title on David Toop's "ambient" compilation Ocean of Sound, a two-CD set released by Virgin in 1995. Other tracks on this anthology include an excerpt from Peter Brötzmann's "Machine Gun," along with pieces by Brian Eno, David Toop with John Zorn, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine, Erik Satie, and others (Peter Gianakopoulos).
Hunter is not credited on the Saturn jacket but his trademark reverb indicates that he was at least engineering the session. Continuation is normally dated 1968-1969, but on stylistic grounds an earlier date is possible for these tracks.
Jupiter Festival
152. [135] Sun Ra (p.); Akh Tal Ebah [Doug E. Williams] (tp, mell); poss. Charles Stephens (tb); Marshall Allen (as); Danny Davis (as, acl); John Gilmore (ts, cl); Danny Ray Thompson (as, libf); Pat Patrick (bars, cl); Ronnie Boykins (b); poss. Clifford Jarvis (d); Carl Nimrod [Carl S. Malone] (space drum); James Jacson (log drum); unidentified (perc).
The East, Brooklyn, NY, 1969
Continuation To (Ra)
Jupiter Festival (Ra)
Saturn ESR 520, Continuation, was issued in 1970. Matrix numbers: ESR37363NP (Side A) and ESR29691 (Side B). Both tracks were recorded at the same live concert.
The collective personnel from the original Saturn jacket was used as a guide. Robert Barry is credited with drums, but the drummer sounds more like Clifford Jarvis. No clarinets are credited; it is possible that Robert Cummings was present on clarinet as well. Akh Tal Ebah is credited with playing trumpet, and his mellophone can be heard in the ensembles. If Ebah (who joined after the move to Philadelphia) is on trumpet, then the trombonist cannot be Ali Hassan as stated on the jacket. Bass player is also uncredited but sounds like Boykins. According to Danny Ray Thompson, the Neptunian libflecto was a modified bassoon constructed by Marshall Allen. It came in two models, one with a saxophone mouthpiece, the other with a French horn mouthpiece. Thompson has a recollection ("not 100 percent") of performing this piece at The East.
From Campbell / Trent The Earthly Recordings 2nd ed.
Please enjoy another Saturn rarity LP rip complements of our friend, Paul W.
thank you, yotte!
ReplyDeleteI-)
Excellent share, thanks.
ReplyDeleteAlways keeping up with your great work, yotte! Many thanks!
ReplyDeleteI often use first minute of Biosphere Blues as an example of Sonny's uncanny command of the blues. For most people, that's the last thing they would associate with Sun Ra, but he grew up playing it. I imagine he must have played tens of thousands of choruses over his time on earth. It got to the point that he could throw the most outlandish ideas into the form and they'd actually work! An easy choice for inclusion into most any Sun Ra mix.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're right, you're right, Rev.B! I've heard him mention in several interviews listening & to and watching blues performers during his youth. Biosphere Blues is such a great tune.
ReplyDeleteI pity the fool that has not heard this music! Good notion to post these three related items. I gots all three real legit like: vinyl and/or cd. Jim dandy!
ReplyDelete