Lanquidity (Definitive Edition)

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The ocean of music recorded by jazz pianist, composer, and Saturn's best-known expat Sun Ra contains so many different style variations, creative directions, and eras, that it's often impossible to comprehend where in that vastness you find yourself at any given time. The musician born Sonny Blount probably wanted it that way. Yet there are good reasons that 1978's Lanquidity has long served as one of the anchors to Ra's 40-plus-year catalog, an album for those curious enough about this unique improviser and bandleader to enter his wide world, and for the discerning fans to pause and take note. One of a handful of late-'70s sessions that Ra and his Arkestra recorded with famed New York producer/engineer Bob Blank (who gravitated towards artists with one foot in the avant-garde and the other in a Downtown New York disco) Lanquidity is a Sun Ra record that grooves like the tides—effortlessly, thoughtfully and at times chaotically; it's free jazz as dance music. The album's beauty hinges on the Arkestra's ability to travel the farthest reaches of Ra's sonic universe while establishing a groove so tight it'd burn a hole in your shoes. But it's also how Blank's recording forwards the band's bedrock rhythm-a-ning courtesy of Richard Williams' bass and the interlocking percussion of drummers Luqman Ali, Atakatune and Michael D. Anderson, and how the Arkestra's soloists at the time, an all-star cast including trumpeter Eddie Gale, guitarist Slo Johnson (who also went by Disco kid), and baritone saxophonist Julian Pressley embrace that funk. There is no better place to begin dancing than on its most famous cut, "Where Pathways Meet,” which conjures a mid-tempo boogie that sounds like it belongs in a classic Blaxploitation film score—interweaving brass lines, one a low-end churn, the other a melodic uplift. Great proof of what you could do with eight horns/woodwinds in a band. Or, for the more dub/skank-minded, there is "Twin Stars of Thence,” which builds on an interplay between Ra's electric piano and synth, with the bass/drums corps, in a fashion that is at once extravagantly funk and minimalist, before the individual horns bring the weird bop. Strut's deluxe 2021 reissue also adds alternate versions of all five originals, for variations on the dance groove. © Piotr Orlov/Qobuz