How in-sync this star-studded collaboration is with the spirit of Sun Ra; Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra succeeds in playing like a transmission from the stars, a deep space echo and chime…lay back and wait for lift off; what bliss.
The Kronos Quartet are currently celebrating an awe-inspiring 50th anniversary as a functioning, creative ground and genre-breaking musical entity. In their time, they have collaborated alongside the farthest reaches of the music world, redefining the parameters of what a classical string quartet can be in work incorporating jazz, folk, punk, industrial, minimalism, avant-garde and pop classicism. Before considering all that, you should also consider the part they played in recognising modern-day composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. So, that they should be helming this, the latest in a series of albums that celebrates and explores the far-out music of Sun Ra, is a marriage that fits like an astronaut and a space suit. In fact, the Kronos’ David Harrington is very clear in his assertion that Sun Ra, whose music sailed over traditional jazz before launching into bold sonic explorations in electronica and mystical realms before spying a land on the horizon that would one day be known as Afrofuturism, rightly belongs in the same canon as other twentieth-century greats like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Nina Simone. But to execute this excursion with the required panache, the Kronos Quartet have enlisted a crew of similarly visionary space cadets from the worlds of jazz, experimental, improvisational and other fields of contemporary composition; this lift-off is going to be explosive.
The whole album succeeds in playing like a transmission from the stars, a deep space echo and chime. It is there right from the off with the title track, an intergalactic shower awash with black holes and comets accompanied by the swooshing swathes of the Kronos Quartet and an intermittent voice announcing missives from the other side of the moon. Then, as if to ground us, the jazzy vocals of Georgia Anne Muldrow appear, singing a swinging little verse invitingly suggesting, “if you find earth boring, just the same old same thing, come on sign up with outer spaceways incorporated.” Maji has the Kronos Quartet front and centre, allowing them a moment to flex those strings in cinematic grandeur against the grounded jungle percussion of Jlin. featuring Laraaji, Daddy’s Gonna Tell You No Lie appears as if floating out of said jungle, snaking high across the treetops and smoking skywards, a salacious sound that prods and caresses the ears as it makes its moves. It disperses to make way for the nine-minute Images suite, landing with Steven Bernstein and Sex Mob at the wheel, producing familiar fifties-sounding jazz motions before the rub-a-dub deep dubby bass pattern pushes the door open to hollow, airy chambers of sound. As Laurie Anderson narrates our journey, if you do not feel yourself strapped aboard a Jupiter to Mars space shuttle flight, abort immediately.
Typically, for a Sun Ra-inspired trip, your ticket to fly is liable to veer off-piste to The Furthest Out Things, a piece where we hear Nicole Lizee and the Kronos crew surfing the outer limits and finding a melange of heavenly voices, celestial keys and then a fade to silence; space is deep. Phenomenon languishes in these ghostly nether regions awhile, organs descend, and a conveyor belt of sci-fi sounds transport the listener to the altar of Black Body Radiance wherein the Kronos strings meet Zachary James Watkins on the periphery of indelible chaos. Planets rise and fade from view, and hostiles, whether real or imagined, are caught in a passing moment; has our journey hit its darkest depth or point of no return? No wonder we feel Blood Running High as a trumpet chimes like a warning siren and RP Boo raps to entice some gloriously vintage-sounding melodic Bop riffing. The Wuz again features Laurie Anderson and Marshall Allen while what sounds like a fretless bass anchors an otherwise free-form, hovering interlude that hangs deliciously suspended for its duration.
Secrets Of The Sun introduces 700 Bliss, Moor Mother and DJ Haram to the mix for a sound collage with flashes of Jazzy sunbursts that shine like stars and then burn out in a second. Trey Spruance and Secret Chiefs 3 present Love In Outerspace with harp brush strokes before a hip-hop drum beat propels the piece to the most groove-based galaxy we have encountered thus far. Three Seasons In The Tempestuous Twelve Inch with Evicshen at the controls is simply three and a half minutes of brain-spinning audio mayhem that provokes and excites in equal measure, a stunning achievement in sound collage class.
Finally, Terry Riley and Sara Miyamoto are transporter beamed into the equation for Kiss Yo’ Ass Goodbye, a finale in which this kaleidoscopic trips every beat, echo, horn burst and orchestral flourish return for a final, jubilant bow before re-ascending back into the darkness, heading for the great unknown. How in-sync this all is with the spirit of Sun Ra, for all that wrong-foots the listener or initially confounds comes together like a finely crafted dovetail joint with deep infiltered immersion. That is when the real rewards woven into this audio cocktail reveal themselves; just let the music wrap itself around you, then lay back and wait for lift off; what bliss.
Order Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra – https://lnkfi.re/KRONOS