Prophet by Sun Ra & His Arkestra

Featuring what may be his only recordings on the Prophet keyboard, these once lost performances expand the omniverse of Sun Ra across a stellar set of lengthy cuts. These works were recorded in a single day and are making their terrestrial debut.

What happens when a Prophet meets a Prophet? The answer lies within these grooves.

Amid the hundreds of recordings issued by Sun Ra and his Arkestra under their various guises, the majority were recorded in concert or in makeshift studios, such as their early 1960s set-up at NYC's Choreographer's Workshop. Beyond those, roughly 22 albums were recorded professionally at Variety Recording Studio in New York's Times Square. However, on August 25, 1986, Ra and cohorts entered Mission Control, a state-of-the-art 24-track studio north of Boston, which was teeming with electronic keyboards and otherworldly sound generators. Nestled within that arsenal was a brand-new digital ultra keyboard — the Prophet VS ("Vector Synthesizer").

Of all the keyboards Ra played throughout his half-century career, the Prophet was one of the most sophisticated. There's no evidence that he had played either of the instrument's earlier incarnations, the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 and Prophet-10. Created using microprocessors, a then-new technological advance, under the auspices of engineer Dave Smith in 1978, the Prophet-5 revolutionized electronic music as the first polyphonic and, most importantly, programmable synthesizer. Ra was intrigued by the Prophet (surely by the instrument as well as by the name), and gave the instrument a solid workout prior to a full Arkestra recording session later that day.

These performances originated from previously unreleased 1986 tapes recorded by preserved by Bill Sebastian as part of his Outer Space Visual Communicator (OVC) project. Irwin Chusid discovered the existence of the tapes and arranged thru Sebastian to have them digitally transferred and mixed by myself and our buddy Sean Slade.

It was a joy and a thrill to be sitting at the console hearing this music for the first time, especially with my fingers on the faders and knobs of the mixing desk. We watched the oxide fly off the 2" tapes during playback, making this our one chance to digitize before they disintegrated into dust. Welcome to the new Sun Ra album …. 35+ years after it was recorded. The Omniverse has expanded once again.

— Brother Cleve (1955 - 2022)

NOTE: This album is also available on LP and CD from Modern Harmonic.

A Helpful Guide to the Many Sun Ra Albums on Bandcamp: daily.bandcamp.com/2017/10/13/sun-ra-album-guide
The foremost figure in musical Afro-futurism and space-jazz. Keyboardist, composer, Arkestra leader, arranger, philosopher-jester, fashion icon, cosmic guide. Born Herman Blount in Alabama, 1914, left the planet in 1993, giving Earthlings a monumental catalog of recordings that transcend genre.

sunra.com