Sun Ra - Atlantis (1969)
Sun Ra’s Atlantis is certainly not one of the most unlistened to albums; it ranks up with some of the greatest jazz recordings of all time. However, many who have never thought of listening to jazz, or had mistakenly thought that jazz was all fairly conventional in comparison to rock music, might be surprised by both the amount of rock music that has been inspired by Atlantis, and by the album’s complete unlikeness to anything you’ve probably ever heard.
For the beginner, Atlantis is not incredibly difficult to enjoy, or hard to appreciate. It is however, a flight of imagination into the far reaches of outer space that rivals any attempt by any other psychedelic jazz or rock artist ever. Employing hypnotic electronic keyboards and polyrhythmic African hand-percussion, Atlantis is an often terrifying journey into a hypnotic, hallucinatory world where metaphysics, consciousness, dreams, reality, physics, memory and the surreal unite in a vibrating synthesis.
The tracks Mu, and Yucatan are atonal compositions laced with traces of Eastern spirituality, while Lemuria and Bimimi are about as esoteric as weather patterns on distant planets. However, the peak of the album is undoubtedly the title track Atlantis, which develops over an incredible twenty-two minutes, and aurally details a frightening descent into the abyss of the lost city. As an introduction to Sun Ra, or as a way into jazz, Atlantis remains one of the boldest and most entertaining recordings ever made.
- Jim Harris
