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Sun Ra The Antique Blacks. [img:$uid]http://i757.photobucket.com/albums/xx218/MMikeyBee/ra_sun_antiquebl_101b.jpg[/img:$uid]
A couple of reviews....
Amazing work from Sun Ra – record that really features a great range of sounds and styles, and a heck of a lot of soul as well! Ra plays some especially nice rocksichord on the set – that freaky, fuzzy keyboard that comes off sounding like a guitar, even though it's played with keys – and there's some spiritual undercurrents to the set that are different than some of Ra's other albums with the instrument – some deeply feeling rhythms and soulful, spiritual expressions that really belie the Space Is The Place generation in which the album was cut. A few recitations imbue the record with a bold sense of poetry, which seems to be carried through strongly in the instrumentation too – especially on John Gilmore's tenor lines, which almost have a Shepp-like quality at points. Other players include Marshal Allen and Danny Davis on alto, Ahk Tal Ebah on trumpet, Clifford Jarvis on drums, and Sly on electric guitar – and titles include "Song No 1", "There Is Change In The Air", "Antique Blacks", "Would I For All That Were", "Ridiculous I & The Cosmos Me", and "This Song Is Dedicated To Nature's God". © 1996-2010, Dusty Groove America, Inc. From dustygroove.com
Recorded in 1974 and unavailable since 1978, The Antique Blacks begins as one of Sun Ra's most soulful and spiritual albums. Set apart from some of his Arkestra's most abstract work, 'Song No. 1' opens the album with sprightly electric piano riffing and shuffling, tribal-style drumming, while its follow-up 'There Is A Change In The Air' proves to be grounded in a similar palette, although here the piece is punctuated by spoken-word passages and wild outbreaks of sax soloing and wah-wah guitar. Sun Ra's rocksichord playing seems to be the musical lynchpin throughout the album, but it's when he plugs in his Moog that the album really spirals off into the realms of lunacy: 'Would I For All That Were' enters into a dark, heavy free-noise domain that's all-but stripped of musical logic, and this is pursued even further during 'You Thought You Could Build a World Without Us', which combines roving, almost Merzbow-like tones with explosive drumming and cosmological ramblings from the great man. From boomkat.com
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