Sun Ra - Exotica (2017) {2CD Set Modern Harmonic MHCD-012}

Sun Ra - Exotica (2017) {2CD Set Modern Harmonic MHCD-012}

A fantastic take on the music of Sun Ra – a set that looks at the way his sounds dovetailed with the exotica movement in American music of the postwar years! Given that he claimed to be from outer space, Ra was already pretty darn exotic himself – but his music also arose at a time when artists like Martin Denny and Les Baxter were taking global sounds and fusing them into more mainstream American music, including jazz – with results that have become legendary over the years!

And while Denny, Baxter, and other contemporaries were more involved with mood music, Ra was part of a generation of jazz musicians – such as Yusef Lateef or Wilbur Harden – who were working a richer vein of the territory for jazz – as you'll hear in these wonderful tracks.
The set brings together key sides from the earliest Ra recordings, plus some unissued material too – done in the really great style of the other Modern Harmonic reissues in recent years. Unissued titles include "April In Paris", "Paradise", "Star Bright", "Spontaneous Simplicity", "Somewhere In Space", and "Cha Cha In Outer Space" – and other titles include "Overtones Of China", "Tiny Pyramids", "The Nile (part 1)", "Kingdom Of Thunder", "Ancient Aiethopia", "India", "Friendly Galaxy", and "Africa" – plus the complete version of "Island In The Sun".

Track LIsting
CD1
01 - Kingdom of Thunder
02 - Space Mates (Abridged)
03 - Star Bright
04 - The Nile, Part 1
05 - Eve
06 - Tiny Pyramids
07 - The Lady with the Golden Shtockings
08 - Paradise
09 - New Horizons
10 - Portrait of the Living Sky
11 - India
12 - Ancient Aitheopia
13 - Planet Earth
14 - April in Paris

CD2
01 - Island in the Sun
02 - Africa
03 - Friendly Galaxy
04 - Interstellar Low Ways
05 - The Conversion of JP (Abridged)
06 - Cha-Cha in Outer Space
07 - Brazilian Sun
08 - Lights on a Satellite
09 - Somewhere in Space
10 - Spntaneous Simplicity
11 - Overtones of China