Sun Ra and His Astro Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra - Space Is the Place
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Free Music Notes for Space Is the Place
Free Music Review: Why? Don't punish yourself.
Hit: 1 Stars
While I like quite a bit out "outside" jazz, this is too much. Over twenty minutes of mindless vamps on "space is the place," yelled unimaginatively by various singers--with no let up. Any instrumental soloing is obliterated by the chanting. And that's twenty minutes worth. It may be "mind-blowing" but that's not good. My mind hurt afterward and I couldn't get the vocals out of it! There is more pointless vocalizing on the last cut. That doesn't leave much room for the instrumentals to take up the slack, which is too bad since some of the players are good. I know saxophonist John Gilmore influenced John Coltrane in the early 1960s.I had this album long ago in high school (circa 1974), and considered it a kind of novelty item--like a Mexican jumping bean, perhaps. I went back to it nearly thirty years later--through Interlibary Loan (good thing I didn't buy it!)--and was repulsed.
Oh yes, we also get three "poems" by Ra in the linear notes, two of which are incomprensible. The other is understandable, but trite.
Perhaps someone out there can recommend some non-vocal Ra material. I have "Holiday for Soul Dance" and like it.
Doug Groothuis
Free Music Review: Fantastic
Hit: 5 Stars
The title cut is one of the most amazing songs ever recorded in the history of music recording. It is one of the very few pieces, of all time by anyone, which deserves adjectives such as "mindblowing." The shorter pieces are upper level Sun Ra recordings. Powerful, incredible music.Free Music Review: Taught Me A Serious Lesson
Hit: 5 Stars
How does one get off calling music such as this music??? Surely this is nothing more but pure noise. Sqwank, sqeek, bam, bang, and boom. Twenty minutes of nothing, just a bunch of weirdos in funny regalia. Wait a minute, I think I see it, I do see it. This Sun Ra fellow took a group of musicians and put disattachment from the things of this world into MUSIC!!! He sits you down in any old chair, and blasts you off into a part of space no satellite has ever seen. How could this be? I am finding new melodies in all this dissonance. I am being challenged to find things I have never seen before. WoW!!! I am thinking!!! Who'd a thunk it. Music can inspire a person to think!Free Music Review: Outer space is the blessed place
Hit: 5 Stars
This is beautiful. My curiousity was succumbed to & I picked this up. Space Is The Place itself goes for 21 minutes w/ chanted vocals, spacey if a little bit cheesy keyboards, excellent sax work & a lot of philosophy in the lyrics. Sometimes it gets to be a bit much but I think the purpose is to overwhelm you. Track 2, Images is outstanding jazz & if it had been penned by someone more 'down to earth' might be a standard by now. Truly brilliant stuff. Discipline continues in a similar vein, slightly moodier but definitely well done & communicative. Sea of Sounds is very much free jazz, & the waves are quite turbulent indeed. Rocket #9 [takes off for the planet Venus] should be a big hit, more space themes but more compact @ 2 & 1/2 minutes. This is my 1st Ra album & I'm almost certain that great as this is, there is probably even better stuff out there, I want Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy in particular but in the meantime I'll be more than happy w/ this. Someone recently had an album which tributed both Sun Ra & Funkadelic & that makes sense as both will free yr mind & get you a ticket on the Mothership. all aboard!Free Music Review: A good start to Saturn
Hit: 4 Stars
"Space is the Place" is the first so-called "free jazz" record I ever heard, and I really had to laugh when I first heard it. It reminded my of a fire alarm in the zoo, and Sun Ra's "space organ" sounds like a Nintendo game boy (especially in the title piece and "Rocket Number Nine"; these two pieces include also vocals by "Space Ethnic Voices"). "Images" is a more conventional big band piece, and "Discipline 33" is a typical free-flowing dissonant composition. "Sea of Sounds" finally is a free jam with squealing saxophone playing by John Gilmore and Marshall Allen. The Impulse! remastering contains some Sun Ra poems that perhaps help better to "understand" the music than any normal liner notes.