TopTenREVIEWS presents the music career and reviews of Sun Ra
Sun Ra
CAREER SPAN:
Decade
Album Score
# Albums
Ratings and rankings are based on all available critic reviews for each album.
Overall Band Score:
2.6800
Sun Ra Album Rankings
1
Featuringthe Astro Infinity Arkestra,Atlantisreveals two very distinct sides of Sun Ra's music. The first consists of shorter works Ra presumably constructed for presentation on the Hohner clavinet.
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2
Last year's Horde Tour featured an extended tribute to Sun Ra's music. He shared a wild July 4th concert in New York's Central Park with Sonic Youth. He's been on the cover of Rolling Stone.
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3
Last year's Horde Tour featured an extended tribute to Sun Ra's music. He shared a wild July 4th concert in New York's Central Park with Sonic Youth. He's been on the cover of Rolling Stone.
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4
Back in the mid-'50s, bandleader Sun Ra decided to get his music to his audience through a more direct process by starting his own label, Saturn Records.
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5
Last year's Horde Tour featured an extended tribute to Sun Ra's music. He shared a wild July 4th concert in New York's Central Park with Sonic Youth. He's been on the cover of Rolling Stone.
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6
Blue Delightis a great late-periodArkestrarecording, notable for several reasons: 1.
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7
Last year's Horde Tour featured an extended tribute to Sun Ra's music. He shared a wild July 4th concert in New York's Central Park with Sonic Youth. He's been on the cover of Rolling Stone.
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8
The boundaries of Sun Ra's self-proclaimed "space jazz" underwent a transformation in the mid-'60s.The Magic Cityis an aural snapshot of that metamorphic process.
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9
This reissue, prior to the release of many of Sun Ra's Saturn albums on Evidence CDs, was often thought of as Ra's second recording although now several earlier dates have appeared.
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10
Space Is the Place provides an excellent introduction to Sun Ra's vast and free-form jazz catalog.
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14
Recorded late in Sun Ra's life in concert, this version of the Arkestra was a good one, but far from the band who could make worlds quake in its presence.
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15
At its best, Sun Ra's orchestra on this CD uses a simple repetitive riff as a basis for lengthy performances that vary dynamics and build up gradually in intensity.
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17
Pianist, composer and arranger Sun Ra may have functioned for years outside the jazz mainstream, but that never stopped him from documenting - recording on what seems like endless reels of magnetic t
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20
This CD adds a previously unreleased "Intergalactic Motion" to the original five-piece program.
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22
On Sun Ra's maiden voyage he succeeds in charting innovative harmonic voicings and provocative rhythmic contrasts, expanding the role of percussion instruments until every chart dances--like a conden
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24
This 1998 Freedom three-disc box set is a confusing addition to Sun Ra's discography; while one disc is a straight reissue (of an album already available on compact disc), the other two consist of co
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27
Although Sun Ra's catalogue of available recordings numbers into the hundreds, there are very few solo entries.
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30
Sun Ra and his Arkestra issued only a handful of titles on the groundbreaking indie ESP-Disk label. Each title respectively contains some of their most expressive musical statements.
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33
Although portions of the Black Myth/Out in Space were previously issued as It's After the End of the World, this two-disc set is far and away the definitive release of the material in question, compi
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34
Recorded in concert in the U.S.
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35
Much like Evidence's Fate in a Pleasant Mood/When Sun Comes Out two-fer, We Travel the Spaceways/Bad and Beautiful also features one album from the Chicago period and one from the New York period.
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37
The band Sun Ra had at the end of the '70s was surely the funkiest he ever had, with electric bassist Steve Clarke (in tandem with upright player Richard Williams) and the twin guitars of Taylor Rich
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38
Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth/Interstellar Low Ways is a great pairing of two classic Saturn LPs from the Chicago period.
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39
Released in the early '90s, Concert for the Comet Kohoutek captures a typically inspired night by Sun Ra & the Intergalactic Space Research Arkestra.
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40
Four different groups led by Sun Ra are featured on this intriguing if generally ragged set.
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49
Fate in a Pleasant Mood/When Sun Comes Out is a pairing of two early-'60s Saturn LPs that catch the Arkestra in an interesting transitional phase.
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50
This compilation of rare material from the Sun Ra Arkestra draws from tapes recorded between 1963 and 1970, and the space-age jazz shaman conjures up a variety of styles and moods along the way.
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51
Alive!/Total Energy has dredged some fine archival MC5 and Sun Ra releases lately, and this entry may be among the best.
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52
A terrific document: the highly eccentric, controversial pianist performs standards under the most informal circumstances.
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54
The second of two Improvising Artists Sun Ra solo piano sets from 1977 reissued on CD (they should have been combined on a single CD) finds the normally forbidding keyboardist digging not only into f
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