THE HELIOSONIC TONE-TETTE

On April 20, 1965, one of the all-time classic recordings of adventurous and far-reaching music was made in New York City. The great Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra convened in engineer Richard L. Alderson's RLA Studio and crafted an amazing and enigmatic recording which still astonishes listeners to this day. "The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra" was issued on Bernard Stollman's forward-looking ESP label, and it sounds like no other record made by anyone, anywhere, ever. Somewhere between outer space chamber music and avant-garde jazz, it introduced 1965 listeners to sounds not normally heard in improvised music such as timpani, piccolo, and the haunting bass marimba. Some months later, Volume Two followed with the addition of chromatic sets of "tuned bongos" and the eerie, electronic Clavioline. The distinctive sonic palette of these two recordings, along with an unusual musical methodology which blurs the lines between composition and improvisation, makes read more...