Sun Ra
Atlantis

LA RECENSIONE

Oh my god! If there is anything stranger than Sun Ra, then humanity should be a bit alarmed.

Nothing is in perpetual motion like this album, and I fear the Earth will never again be graced by anything like it.

Sun Ra was an eccentric oddball who came from Saturn, played a clavinet (keyboard instrument with an archetypal sound), lived off the garbage heaps of George Lucas, dressed as an ancient Egyptian, performed as a fire-eater in his shows, did not have sex because he believed himself as pure as an angel, attended the Rotary club of Grosseto, and often dined with Bill Gates. Sorry, the last two aren’t true, but Sun Ra himself was an absurd liar...

This is free-jazz at its most experimental stage, using instruments never heard before then to create a unique weave in the music, as, in his intentions, something alien and at the same time spiritual. Sun Ra, among other things, was also a musician who one day invented cosmic music. Everywhere there dwell polyrhythms, as in “Mu” for instance, which follows a path that is not lethargic, not energetic, nor something in between... but all the steps simultaneously. “Yucatan” has insanely damned rhythms that seem to resonate from some African jungle, and it is as funky as anything else in music. In fact, the first side of the record is still digestible and ““easy-listening””.

The most significant and superlative part of the album is the second side, with only one track: Atlantis. The percussion is indescribable, it seems to bounce off the hot walls of hell, and all the music extends on a carpet of mystery; what is more evident, however, is the use of intervals, an area not yet fully explored in music. Atlantis is a breath-holding swim in an unknown, murky, sinuous, and dark sea, in search of the lost continent. In the end, after a wave of every kind of sound, the hysterical cries of the inhabitants of Atlantis can be heard, and it becomes clear that the track is a real trip to the mythical city.

Using electric keyboards less than a year after their appearance, Sun Ra quickly pushed the new technology to the most extreme limit dared.

Surprise, intrigue, and terror, therefore, and the fact that Sun Ra believed he had actually met those people is the most normal thing amidst all this.

And, among other things, he was also a musician..