Sun Sparta Locals

"I have always thought orchestra. I play that way, even when playing the piano." — Sun Ra. Monorails and Satellites were two volumes of solo piano works recorded by Sun Ra in 1966. Volume 1 was issued on his Saturn label in 1968, volume 2 the following year. They were the first commercial LPs of the artist's solo keyboard excursions. Vol. 1 featured seven idiosyncratic Sun Ra originals and one standard delivered in Sunny's singular manner. Vol. 2 consists entirely of original compositions. A tape of a third, unreleased volume was discovered posthumously by Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive. Released here for the first time, it consists of five originals and four standards, and was recorded in stereo.

Drifting Sun are a UK-based Progressive Rock studio project. Their music has been described as dramatic, theatrical, and atmospheric, in the true style of Progressive Rock giants such as Dream Theater, Queensryche, Genesis and Jethro Tull, to name but a few of the bands that influenced their sound.
Drifting Sun have been through many incarnations. Their first eponymous album appeared in 1996. Their second, On The Rebound was released two years later with a completely different band. The only constant was founder member Pat Sanders. Drifting Sun then disappeared from the music scene until Pat reconvened the band again with a totally new line up. Trip The Life Fantastic (2015) has taken a year and a half to record in studios in the UK and Canada…

Circles Around the Sun’s third full-length studio album, a self-titled, seven track collection, marks the final recordings of founding member and guitarist Neal Casal. The sessions were tracked at legendary recording engineer Jim Scott’s Southern California studio just one week prior to Casal tragically taking his own life. In a note left behind by Casal, he requested that the album be completed and for the band to continue in his absence. CATS surviving members keyboardist Adam MacDougall, bassist Dan Horne and drummer Mark Levy honored those wishes, making a decision to finish the album and to move forward as a band.

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’.