If you have never been on a Star Trek with Sun Ra and his musical space ship, this 2 cd/Blue Ray might be the place to start. What’s is in this boxed set is the actual 1974 film/documentary, the soundtrack to the film and an extra discs worth of previously unissued tunes under the heading “The Mathematics of The Altered Destiny”. The film is on the heels of Sun Ra’s classic album of the same title, and the band includes his all time best team that featured Marshall Allen, John Gilmore and Lex Humphries in the lineup.
There are a couple ways to take in this beamed down collection. The film is a wild mix of “Afrofuturism” with dashes of Sci-Fi, Surrealism and Blaxploitation. The story is a bit of a trip (literally), with lines like “It’s after the end of the world! Don’t you know that yet?” chanted by June Tyson teamed with Ra’s surreal organ. There’s also a wild drum opus “Watusa” as well as classic material like “Calling Planet Earth”, “Outer Spceways Incorporated” and “We Travel The Spaceways”. There are moments of complete randomness and disjointed scenes, but as it says in the film, the attitude is ‘Don’t play what you know; play what you don’t know!”
The soundtrack can be appreciated without any knowledge of the film as can the “unearthed” tunes like “Creation is Fabrication”. Wild, frantic and still swinging, the music, and Sun Ra’s orbit spin like a sun around a planet.