Sun Ra was a true innovator, releasing music that was a bit different to his peers from his earliest output. But what would Sun Ra have made of today’s music scene? If he is looking down from his cosmic realm, he’ll be pleased to know that his music from the past still sounds eerily futuristic. Recorded in just one day, on October 10, 1961, The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra features 11 tracks. Among the selections is the Latin-influenced opener, “Bassism,” the bluesy “Of Sounds and Something Else,” and the aptly named, “What’s That?,” which breaks into a four-saxophone improvisation, stands out as an example of Ra’s early experimental work.
Empire of the Sun, the visionary Australian electronic duo comprising Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore are back with their first album in eight years. Regarding the new LP, the band’s Luke Steele explained in a press statement, “Ask That God is an album we searched for and were thankfully blessed with. We are nothing more than conduits, gathering experience and finding what is meant for the Empire to find.”
Celestial Love contains recordings made in September 1982 at New York's Variety Studios, which had hosted countless Sun Ra sessions since the late 1960s. This was one of the last extended sessions at Variety, and these recordings were the last studio works released on Sun Ra's own Saturn label (though the label did continue to press concert recordings, and new studio recordings did appear on other labels). Aside from their inclusion on Celestial Love, tracks from these sessions landed on the albums A Fireside Chat With Lucifer and Nuclear War. Since Nuclear War's contents overlapped with both Fireside Chat and Celestial Love, we have reconstituted the latter two as complete albums, thus covering all titles from these Variety dates.
The planets align as the mighty Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of the maestro Marshall Allen, are releasing their first studio album in over twenty years, ‘Swirling’.
The album Elles by Youn Sun Nah was released by Warner Music International. This captivating collection of songs showcases the extraordinary talent and versatility of Korean jazz vocalist Youn Sun Nah.