Sun Ra & His Arkestra - The Magic City

This landmark 1965 Sun Ra album, now reissued in a definitive stereo edition on LP/CD and digitally, marks the 2017 launch of the new COSMIC MYTH RECORDS label, which will reissue Sun Ra's SATURN Records catalog in authoritative, high-quality remastered editions under license from Sun Ra LLC, the artist's earthly heirs.

Christopher Trent, co-author of The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra, wrote, "For me, The Magic City is about the most important recording Sun Ra ever released: so many unprecedented ideas unveiled in one album." Projects like The Magic City prove the categorical futility of "File Under: Jazz." Even the cheeky term "Space Jazz" cannot frame the extremes to which Sun Ra pushed his art in the mid-1960s.

1965 was a turbulent year for the Arkestra and its leader, and many consider The Magic City a flashpoint for that upheaval. Arkestra drummer Tommy Hunter, quoted in John Szwed's Sun Ra bio SPACE IS THE PLACE, describes a typical performance of the period: "It was like a fire storm coming off the bandstand."

On the original The Magic City LP, issued on Saturn, the monster 27-1/2 minute title track sprawled across side A. Ra supervised the Arkestra's improvisational process via keyboard cues or hand signals. He was always in charge—hence critic Simon Adams describing the title track as "27 minutes of controlled freedom." "The Magic City" was never performed in concert; saxophonist John Gilmore said it was "unreproducible, a tapestry of sound." Robert L. Campbell, co-author of The Earthly Recordings …, said, "If any one piece was intended to be Sun Ra's monument, it is The Magic City."

The shorter works on The Magic City reflect the same improvisational approach, spatiality, and lack of structure. One session outtake, "Other Worlds," an alternate version of "Shadow World," is included as a bonus track. The LP and CD editions include liner notes by Sun Ra scholar Christopher Trent. Historical and technical liner notes are provided by noted jazz historian Ben Young.

First-generation Saturn pressings of The Magic City were monophonic. The album was reissued on CD by Evidence in 1993 with the title track in mono and the LP side B tracks in stereo. A full stereo LP version had been issued on Sun Ra's Thoth subsidiary label around 1970; however, it suffered from a technical flaw that prevented many copies from tracking cleanly through the first cut on side B. A 1973 LP reissue on Impulse featured reprocessed stereo, and a cheap, terrible-sounding bootleg LP—on a badly replicated "Saturn" label—has circulated in recent years. For this definitive reissue, Cosmic Myth Records used stereo sources which are superior to the Thoth pressing.

℗ 2017 Cosmic Myth Records
All tracks produced by Sun Ra
All titles composed by Sun Ra
© Enterplanetary Koncepts (BMI)
Issued under license from Sun Ra LLC

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