Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth (Remastered 2014) [feat. John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, James Spaulding & Art Hoyle]

Sun Ra albums often featured material grouped together from different sessions but loosely following an (un)conventional logic or theme, and this one (first released in 1966) is no different. The first three tracks, recorded in 1958, are a sort of celestial travelogue where the Arkestra visited Earth (“Planet Earth” heard in stereo for the first time), time-traveled to the Garden of Eden (“Eve”), and then visited Asia (“Overtones of China”). Recorded in 1956 for Tom Wilson’s Transition label (subsequently reissued on the Delmark label’s Sound of Joy in 1968), the final four tracks here are some of the earliest recordings by the bandleader, yet they're of good quality because the sessions were conducted in a studio. Much of the early material is firmly in the conventional hard-bop and big band styles of the day, illustrating how capable and successful the bandleader was at writing and arranging for others. Two halves of one galactic whole, this is indeed another Chicago-era Sun Ra gem. It's been remastered here from original source tapes, using a 24-bit transfer for unprecedented sound quality.