Sun Ra - Strange Strings

Atavistic/UMS 263

Expanded ensemble free improvisation has a few readily visible signposts – among these are Coltrane’s Ascension, Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity, and Ayler's New York Eye and Ear Control, not to mention entrées from Ornette and Sun Ra. There are essentially two ways in which large-ensemble improvisation is manifest, from an expanded small group with terse themes and subsequent soloists – a la Ascension or Manfred Schoof’s analogous European Echoes (FMP) – or contrarily, exploring varied masses of sound irrespective of the soloists’ voices, such as Alan Silva’s Celestrial Communications Orchestra or Bill Dixon’s Orchestra of the University of the Streets.

Often name-checked alongside the above references, The Magic City, a long-form piece conducted by Sun Ra and his Arkestra in 1965, is a sparsely populated series of solos, duets and trios emphasizing improvisational fleetness alongside the leader’s electric tones. However, Ra’s cosmic exploration and vast solar interconnectedness soon required music elevated beyond even the most potent soloist’s contributions.

Recorded in 1966, Strange Strings (originally released on El Saturn) features an eleven-piece ensemble on various non-Western or otherwise obscure string instruments, in addition to occasional reeds, brass, and percussion. Added to this mélange is a healthy dose of studio reverb and distortion. Though separation between sounds is audible, the audio wash placed over the music fills in the cracks with an otherworldly, metallic edge creating a very dense slab of large-ensemble music. Therefore, Strange Strings has more in common with Silva’s orchestras than The Magic City. Liner scribe and instrument-maker Hal Rammel details the origins of many of the strings and associated objects employed by the Arkestra on these pieces, and connections between the Strings sessions and contemporaneous Ra recordings, but the specificity is not necessary to understanding Ra’s intent – seeking out tonalities and massing sounds that conventional instruments, even at their most cosmically attuned, cannot approach.

The set begins with “Worlds Approaching,” an atonal melody assisted by the jagged lines of arco bass, tympani and electric piano. There’s a metallic quality added not only to the battery of percussion, but also Pat Patrick’s flute and Marshall Allen’s oboe. Unlike the dubbed-out underpinnings of “Adventure Equation” (from Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy), the echoing clangs appear to swallow John Gilmore’s tenor here, blending his overblowing into just another sound from the otherworldly menagerie. Granted, this is not real-time but studio treatment of the improvisations, altering their character to align them tonally with electric organs and interplanetary engines. Of course, Ra’s interest in metallic tones and found sounds is not new to this recording (dig “Door Squeak”); if titles are indeed prophetic, even the din of Chicago’s mass transit provided inspiration for “El is a Sound of Joy” in the latter 1950s.

The orchestra of strangely-excited strings appears first on “Strings Strange,” a first take of the record’s namesake. Following a brief horn blast, Clifford Jarvis’ drums mate with lutes, erhu, koto, violins (perhaps played between the knees), assorted percussion and a thunder-sheet amid masses of reverb and in-the-red recording levels, capped by ululating from vocalist Thlan Aldridge (Art Jenkins). The tune approximates Silva’s “Solestrial” (from Skillfulness, ESP, 1969), surges of reverb-heavy percussion and sonic density separated by vigorous glissandi and frantic pizzicato – indeed, Silva was a musical associate of Ra in the latter half of the decade. Sure, there’s the exuberant madness of “untrained” string playing, but it’s frenzied sonic communion speaking in wood-and-string tongues (albeit audibly conducted). A second and longer take comprises “Strange Strange,” bottomed this time with Ronnie Boykins’ bass, which serves as much as Ra’s hand-signals to direct the string-chorus’ motion. Jarvis’ drums are less prominent, bows and fingers moving more clearly of their own textural accord. But even as individual sounds become gradually familiar in this tone-world, the music’s thrust remains: whether un-lubricated door hinge, sarangi or some homemade construction is not the point of Strange Strings – these tones and their motion are a tool for travel.