Sun Ra Times Two

Two albums with the same title, by the same artist, basically released one week apart on the same planet? Even considering the dubious history of music-biz capers and catastrophes, the Lights on a Satellite kerfuffle is hilariously surreal. By the time it was discovered, covers were already printed and records were already pressed. It's so bizarre that it's tempting to suspect intergalactic powers were involved. Could the ghost of that interstellar traveler, Master Sun Ra, who thought space was the place, have had a hand in this unlikeliest of Saturnian conjunctions?

Fortunately, the two versions of Lights on a Satellite are very different. Out of the past, with Ra leading the band, comes the double-LP live recording Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank. Co-produced by Zev Feldman and Michael D. Anderson and released by Resonance Records in December 2024, this set is also available in CD form. While the title implies Paris, this concert, sponsored by the Left Bank Jazz Society in Baltimore, was held in the latter city's Famous Ballroom on July 23, 1978. Anderson did the tape transfers, Matthew Lutthans mastered the final record, and the LPs were pressed at Quebec City's Le Vinylist.

A classic example of the expansive musical and theatrical spectrums that Ra, née Herman Poole Blount, and his band inhabited, this well-recorded live set is a mix of standards, including Harold Arlen's "Somewhere over the Rainbow," Fletcher Henderson's "Yeah Man!," and Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight," and the Arkestra's patented freeform explorations such as "We Travel the Spaceways" and "Tapestry from an Asteroid."

The second release, by the current Arkestra, which has continued on since Ra's 1993 death, is the newly recorded Lights on a Satellite. Released on the German In+Out label and pressed at Optimal Media, the recording is the work of engineer James Farber. Tracked in the Power Station's Studio A, this large, seemingly unruly ensemble presented special challenges, even for an engineer as talented and experienced as Farber. Yet for Farber not much is new: In just his first three years in the business he assisted on records as monumental as Masahiko Satoh's All-in All-Out, the triple live album No Nukes: The Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future album, and Bruce Springsteen's The River. He went on to work with Nile Rodgers, Talking Heads, and Meredith Monk, among many others, and spent years as the go-to American engineer for ECM Records.

"When I enter into a project, I ask like a zillion questions so I can plan every aspect of the [recording] setup precisely," Farber began in a recent interview. "I don't want to find out that there's an extra tom-tom that has to go way down on the console and not with the drum kit." To get an idea of the layout, Farber spoke with In+Out Records founder Frank Kleinschmidt and two Arkestra players: Knoel Scott, who plays baritone, alto saxophones, and percussion, and percussionist Elson Nascimento. Farber explains, "There were like 50 inputs from 15 horns, four string players, piano, keyboards, bass, drums, two percussionists, two guitarists, one lead singer, ... and three of the horn players also had vocal mikes.

"Frank told me, half-serious and half-jokingly, you'll learn in this process that in the Arkestra, nobody's in charge and everybody's in charge," Farber continues. "When I showed up the morning of the session, other horn players who were not on the list started filtering in and I said, 'Okay gimme a second, I got to fit you guys into the puzzle, make seats, get mikes, figure out where it's going to come up on the console.' About that time, one of the horn players looked at me and said, 'Welcome to our Arkestra.'"

Amazingly, despite the chaos, almost everything in the session was captured live in single takes. According to Farber, nothing was fixed after the fact: "Of course, it has rough edges, but that's part of the music." Mixed, mastered, and pressed in Germany, where, Farber notes, the balances on the recording were "fine-tuned," the album is available as a CD, a double black-vinyl LP, an LP set with one orange and one magenta, and a double clear-vinyl LP package signed by Marshall Allen.

The Arkestra circa 2024 has an eclectic mix of old and young players, all anchored and guided by the presence of Ra compatriot, original Arkestra member, and alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who is 100 years old.

"No one would ever know that Marshall is 100 years old," Farber told me. "He was present and sounded great when he played. While he's the director of the band, he has help so he doesn't have to be that vocal. I think a lot of what he does was done before they got to the studio."

The music on the Arkestra's new Lights on a Satellite also varies, between freeform big-band explorations, a newly discovered Ra tune, "Baby Won't You Please Be Mine" from 1955, and more traditional numbers like "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans," all of it in arrangements by Allen and Ra. "The spirit of that organization really continues," Farber concludes. "Even the young guys are all in on the vibe of the original band. I was pleasantly surprised how much these sessions leaned traditional. But it wasn't without an experimental side too. The range of Sun Ra has always been just amazing."

COMMENTS
kai's picture

These two releases just origin from two alternate universes, accidentally linked by a wormhole / Einstein-Rosen bridge.

Which perfectly fits to the music style presented on these records.

There‘s a good chance more same titled releases will show up once the chord tensions of the music will have created more wormholes into further alternate universes.

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