[.ca] Jazz In Silhouette

mind blowing:
his music is great and takes on many styles all at once.the playing has a free-form appeal but yet is structured and has a beauty about it.the man is genius.

SPACEY, FRESH, AND BEAUTIFUL.:
Although not as futuristic and revolutionary by todays standards or by Ra's own soon-to-be even more spaced out rythms on "Heliocentric Worlds", this is still an amazingly fresh (and accessible) album. If you are ever interested of listening to Sun Ra then this is definitley the place to start. The first track, "Enlightenment", is one of my very favorite jazz songs and features an amazingly tight solo by little known trumpeter, Hobart Dobson. This albums foreshadows what Miles Davis would do with bebop and is a beautiful milestone in the progression of Jazz.

Pretty Good Session:
This was released on Ra's Saturn label in 1957. It's not quite as startling, colorful, or brilliant as "SuperSonic Jazz", which he released in 1956; the edges seem to have been filed down a bit on the music. But it's good stuff, listenable jazz with an exotic edge. The one amazing track here is "Ancient Aethiopia" - it fuses eastern & western motifs together and sounds well ahead of its time.

Any Herman Blount record will educate you:
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of Sun Ra albums. Not all in print of course. This one is pretty nice. Some like this one are jazz with a slight twist. Some are completely abstract, some are something different from anything you've ever heard. There are Do Wop and Disco Sun Ra albums made well before the terms Do Wop and Disco were coined. As a matter of fact it could be argued that Sun Ra invented Do Wop, Disco, rock and fusion jazz since he was experimenting in these genres long before most anyone else. They are all worth listening to.

A Must:
I am a Sun Ra rookie. I heard of him, but never heard him. So, unlike other reviewers here, this is my first Sun Ra album. And I love it. More precisely, I think that its a masterpiece. One of those albums you here and just know you discovered a wide new world. Music will never sound the same again! (*written while hearing this album again, and dicovering how great it is).

• Enlightenment
• Saturn
• Velvet
• Ancient Aiethopia
• Hours After
• Horoscope
• Images
• Blues at Midnight