Strange Celestial Road

Absolutely essential!!!!!


an essential slice of avant-garde funk cosmology   September 11, 2001
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

This album, recorded in the 70s, using a collossal 27 piece band, is something of an enigma, in that it represents some of Sun Ra's most accessible work, combined with some of his most extravagant, shamelessly cosmic excursions. In many ways, the album can be seen as the missing link between the abrasive noise-scapes of 'Space is the Place' or 'The Solar Myth' and the later groove-based tracks on 'Lanquidity'. As such, it conveys a perfect fusion of the free with the funky.

The album begins with a huge, wake-up horn blast at the beginning of 'Celestial Road' before settling into a languid, blues-drenched keyboard riff, backed with electric bass and sultry vocals from June Tyson and one Rhoda Blount (surely Ra's sister?) singing: 'Travelling Strange Celestial Roads, Endless Heaven," a refrain which is repeated throughout, as the track settles into a crawling groove featuring some outstanding horn solos - and all the while overscored with otherworldly, screeching synthesiser howls which, nonetheless, never detract from the earthy rumble of the central riff.

The second track, 'Say', kicks off at a stomping tempo with a wide, free-floating horn riff and soon hunches down into a heavy, almost fusion-like, cruncher - hinting at Ra's earlier experimentations with rock bands like the MC5. Pretty much every member of the band gets to take a solo, many overlapping, with electric guitar battling with flute and bongo for supremacy. Arching over all of it, however, is some blistering, muscular blowing from tenor giant John Gilmore. The track crashes forward with an irrestible energy until finally dissolving into ethereal, alien keyboard sounds in a distorted upper register which sound like the after-howl of a successful lift-off into Ra's beloved outer space.

The final track, 'I'll Wait for You', seeks to combine everything that makes Sun Ra important. Beginning with a snaking, loose, yet undeniably funky riff, and a vocal refrain evoking astral travel, weird encounters, and even unrequited love ("Where human feet have never trod, where human eyes have never seen, I'll wait for you"), the piece meanders into big, billowing improvisations in which Ra plays the orchestra as a single instrument - huge sheets of sound rising and falling, persussion rumbles, horn blasts, tumbling free-form vistas - but, unlike earlier excursions, all the while tied to a rhythm, as a seriously funky electric bass vamps continually beneath it all, and the vocal refrain washes in and out of the listener's consciousness, brought to the fore, then pushed beneath the waves of sound. The track, and the album, fade out like the dying tail of a comet shooting out into the blackness of space, taking all warmth with it, with the listener, exhausted, unable to follow any further, many, many miles from home.

Overall, this is heavily produced album, a creation of the studio, but with a raw, earthy feel that somehow perfectly complements the cosmic themes within. A journey for the mind and a toe-tapper all at the same time. For any serious student of Ra, this is an absolute must.