Artist: Sun Ra
Album: Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank
Genre: Avant-Garde Jazz, Free Jazz, Big Band
Label: Resonance Records
Released: 2024
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- CD 1:
- Band Intro/Thunder of Drums (Sun Ra) - 4:27
- Tapestry from an Asteroid (Sun Ra) - 12:52
- Somewhere over the Rainbow (Arlen-Harburg) - 2:59
- A Pleasant Place in Space (Sun Ra) - 4:21
- Space Travelin' Blues (Sun Ra) - 5:55
- Yeah Man (F.Henderson) - 2:37
- Big John's Special (H.Henderson) - 3:09
- Lights on a Satellite (Sun Ra) - 4:47
- Lady Bird (Dameron)/Half Nelson (Davis) - 5:54
- CD 2:
- Cocktails for Two (Johnston-Coslow) - 4:27
- Watusi (Sun Ra) - 11:23
- They Plan to Leave (Sun Ra) -09:10
- Images in a Mirror (Sun Ra) - 4:09
- We Travel the Spaceways (Sun Ra) - 7:28
- Left Bank Blues (Sun Ra) - 6:06
- 'Round Midnight (Monk) - 5:53
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Sun Ra and His Myth Science Cosmo Swing Arkestra were on fire when they took the stage at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore on a late July night in 1978. In a concert presented by the Left Bank Jazz Society, Ra, along with mainstay collaborators June Tyson, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, and a band that included over a dozen other players, blazed through the kind of interstellar jazz experimentalism they were innovating in real time throughout the '70s and beyond. Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank collects recordings from this inspired performance and releases them for the first time. After warming up with a spotlight on percussion and rough, minimal synthesizer playing, the band launches into the large group improvisation of "Tapestry from an Asteroid," a tune that moves from a standard vocal introduction to walls of instrumental chaos, ending with space-age solo electronics from Ra. It's a perfect display of Sun Ra's masterful control, moving organically from cluttered noise to almost pristine synth symphonics. This control continues throughout the concert, with moments of playful sweetness like an out-there rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," loose and stumbly romping on "Space Travelin' Blues," a cyborg reading of Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight," a few spaced-out standards, and Arkestra staples like "We Travel the Spaceways." Other standout Sun Ra originals include the woozy and melancholic "They Plan to Leave," a tune where multiple vocalists croon, howl, and harmonize a tale of outsiders conspiring to escape from Earth. The performance of "Lights on a Satellite" here is one for the books, with the group moving like a unified organism around the sadly lovely ballad. It's thrilling that even with the endless hours of archival Sun Ra material, there's still new previously unreleased recordings of this high caliber coming out 30 years after Ra himself left Earth for a different planet. Live at the Left Bank is a top-tier document of what Ra and his band were capable of at the height of their powers, and a must-hear set for anyone enthusiastic or even curious about their music.
Review by Fred Thomas