The late, great Sun Ra operated his jazz Arkestra through much of the seventies and eighties until his ultimate and untimely return to the Saturn of his \u2018birth\u2019. Ra (aka Herman \u2018Sonny\u2019 Blount) was renowned as an iron disciplinarian who inspired either devotion or scepticism amongst the players in his band.\u00a0 In the early 1950s, he was experimenting with electronic instruments, and two bassists, one on an electric bass. He was one of the first people to establish his own record label for distributing his own records.\u00a0 He also liked to dress himself and his band as figures from Egyptian myth. Ra emphasised the sense of jazz as outsider art with deadly irony and deadly seriousness.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jerry Dammer\u2019s Spatial A.K.A, which started as a Sun Ra \u2018tribute band\u2019, performs a suite of Ra originals including \u2018I\u2019ll Wait for You\u2019 (about the afterlife!!), \u2018Jungle Madness\u2019, \u2018Discipline\u2019 and \u2018Retrospect\u2019, \u2018 Soul Variations on Land\u2019 and melds Ra\u2019s \u2018Nuclear War\u2019 with Dammers\u2019 own \u2018Man at C&A\u2019 as performed by Dammers previous band \u2018The Specials\u2019.\u00a0 At the end of this show, the band tramped off stage to dance around the Philharmonic Bar while singing \u2018Space is the Place\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spatial A.K.A have all the potential to do real justice to all this wonderful music, but I had the distinct impression that this two and a half hour set, the third in three days between Manchester, Edinburgh and Liverpool, towards the end of a month-long tour, was a gig too far.\u00a0 There was none of the nudging jokiness of the usual big band camaraderie, and several of the players sat in stolid silence between riffs. The band is full of the cream of British jazz: Finn Peters\u2019 warm, rich flute, Empirical\u2019s Nathaniel Facey on alto, Denys Baptiste on tenor, Jason Yarde on soprano, Larry Stabbins (ex Working Week) on tenor, and the technical riches of Zoe Rahman on piano.\u00a0 But the solos were often curtailed, and Facey, surely one of the most talented altoists this country has ever produced, sat stony faced until the riches of Alice Coltrane\u2019s \u2018Journey\u2019 produced his characteristic stabbing fluency.\u00a0 In this latter tune, Rahman moved effortlessly into the sheets of sound that Alice Coltrane\u2019s husband John developed as his signature.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dammers also uses two basses, and three percussionists so this is a band that can drive, and the rhythm section certainly did; impossible to sit still with this lot on stage.\u00a0 The stage, itself, was decorated with \u2018aliens\u2019 accoutred with musical instruments, and the band wear their King Tut headdresses, spangly jellabas, and Elton John shades with considerable aplomb. Catch them when they\u2019ve had a bit more rest between gigs and you\u2019re in for a real treat!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ian Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The late, great Sun Ra operated his jazz Arkestra through much of the seventies and eighties until his ultimate and untimely return to the Saturn of his \u2018birth\u2019. Ra (aka Herman \u2018Sonny\u2019 Blount) was renowned as an iron disciplinarian who inspired either devotion or scepticism amongst the players in his band.\u00a0 In the early 1950s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15],"tags":[137,237,243],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n