The mission of The Department of Afro-American Research Arts and Culture to identify the global significance of the creative contributions pioneered by an international diaspora of Blackness
Search DAARAC's Archive

Friday, May 2, 2008

Sun Ra - Space Is The Place (1974)





1. Space Is The Place
2. Images
3. Discipline
4. Sea Of Sounds
5. Rocket Number Nine

Amazon.com
Space Is The Place opens with its title track, a twenty-minute freeform freak-jazz-psychedelic-soul-funk meltdown, a thundering acid-bop meltdown full of squirming melodies, dramatically repurposed instruments, head-splittingly chaotic vocals, solos that seem to spin off in multiple directions at once, and layers of percussion that'll make you dance and have a seizure at the same time. It sounds primitive and futuristic and progressive and playful and high-minded and juvenile and logical and psychotic all at once, and it's a masterpiece. And that's just the first song on the album.

Flip the record over, and you've got four more gems. "Images" is the sound of post-bop teetering on the edge of free jazz. Led by Sun Ra's oceanic piano, the song swerves from a gorgeous theme into regions of near atonality before spiraling back into beauty again, with the kind of high-minded grace reserved for geniuses. "Discipline" is a rolling, apocalyptic drone, and "Sea Of Sounds" is sheer scorched earth freeform noise. "Rocket Number Nine" is willfully cheesy, utterly irresistible space-age jazz pop.

Classic freak jazz. Get it.

0 comments: