Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

LP-MH-8269C

Colour

Purple

Colour details

Violet

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2024-05-24

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Redeye

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

90771826916

Total Cap

Purple LP

CD-MH-8269

90771826923

Artist

Sun Ra

Genre US

Jazz

Label US

MODERN HARMONIC

Modern Harmonic

Sun Ra, born Herman Blount in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, was an American Free-Jazz composer, pianist and band leader. He was a pioneer of free improvisation and modal jazz, as well as an early user of electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Sun Ra's music innovations and visionary experiences set him apart as a true musical innovator. He formed the Sun Ra Arkestra in the 1950s and continued to compose and perform until his death in 1993.Born and raised in Alabama, Sun Ra showed exceptional talent as a pianist from a young age. By the age of 11, he could sight-read and compose music. As a teenager, he performed with local jazz and R&amp;B bands before taking on his first full-time musical job leading the Sonny Blount Orchestra. In the mid-1930s, Sun Ra had a transformative experience during deep meditation where he claimed to have been transported to Saturn by beings from outer space who tasked him with spreading peace through music.

Newest Listed Items

The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do. It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you’ll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. Pressed on violet vinyl!

When you’re Sun Ra, you don’t need synthesizers to evoke apocalyptic visions and interstellar excursions. You don’t even need a band.

Ra is most widely known for working with various iterations of his Arkestra, but he was no stranger to unaccompanied keyboard expeditions. His discography contains solo piano albums, solo Fender Rhodes records, and solo recordings on conventional organ, the latter going as far back as his home recordings from the 1940s. But none of those instruments ever offered Sun Ra the kind of sonic artillery that waited beneath his fingers and feet when he sat before the keyboards, pedals, and multicolored constellation of tabs controlling the Wurlitzer pipe organ. 

Mystic and magisterial, Ra comes off here like a cross between a demonically riffing ‘50s horror movie villain and a futuristic congregation leader delivering the interplanetary gospel. Brassy stabs provide the kind of punctuation that could be graphically rendered as an endless string of exclamation marks in 500-point font. String-like swoops and swirls dance across the top of the carnage, cooling the flames just enough to keep the whole thing from combusting (for a while at least) but never dousing the fiery fury that Ra draws forth from the instrument.

Excelsior Mill

Music US

Discover Excelsior Mill by Sun Ra on violet vinyl from Modern Harmonic. A mesmerizing solo organ performance that evokes apocalyptic visions and interstellar excursions.