Sun Ra, 'Newport Jazz Festival / The Electric Circus'

Jazz
Sun Ra NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL / THE ELECTRIC CIRCUS
TRANSPARENCY

ON JUPITER
ART YARD
ESSENTIAL "UFO"

The Sun Ra reissue train keeps on rolling, and most recently it has produced two albums that could not be more different. The Transparency label has been unearthing reams of never-before-heard concerts, and now it gives us a great double-CD: Sun Ra's set at the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival and a 1968 show in New York. Throughout the 1969 show, Sun Ra pierces the eardrums with his synthesizer noodlings while the band blows, grooves, and chants behind him. By Newport standards, this must have been anarchy. Several of the songs are "unidentified," and that's part of the charm. So is the fact that the list of personnel is shaky; the qualifier "possibly" appears before the lineup of musicians. "On Jupiter," which finally brings a gem to CD, is quite the opposite. Though it clocks in at under a half-hour, the album perfectly captures Sun Ra's band - identified here as the Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra - in 1979, negotiating the wide swath between postbop and funk. There are just three cuts: the brief title track; the long closer, "Seductive Fantasy," an unusually tender number that features Sun Ra playing beautifully on the piano; and the meat of the set, "UFO," where serious disco-funk takes over. (Out now)

STEVE GREENLEE