Lingerie Series 02

The cinematic ambitions of Chilly Gonzales were not previously well known, although very few forms fit his intentions to cycle between solo piano and throwback dance music quite like an original score. (Of course, if he'd tried to fit both piano meditations and funky house on a proper album, the cries of "Unity!" would have gone up immediately from outraged music fans.) Ivory Tower, the soundtrack to an "existentialist sports comedy about chess and success," was apparently recorded before the movie was filmed, so the filming could be arranged around the album; it's true that this sounds more like an album than a soundtrack. The piano lines are simplistic and repetitive, and the rest of the production is sunny, breezy house music the way they made it in New York during the mid-'90s, similar to Gonzales' Soft Power from 2008 - but without the attention-grabbing retro qualities…

One of the towering figures of 20th century's music, Alabama-born pianist and organist Herman "Sun Ra" Blount (1914) became the cosmic musician par excellence. Despite dressing in extraterrestrial costumes (but inspired by the pharaohs of ancient Egypt) and despite living inside a self-crafted sci-fi mythology (he always maintained that he was from Saturn, and no biographer conclusively proved his birth date) and despite littering his music with lyrics inspired to a self-penned spiritual philosophy (he never engaged in sexual relationships apparently because he considered himself an angel), Sun Ra created one of the most original styles of music thanks to a chronic disrespect for both established dogmas and trendy movements.