Excelsior Mill

by Sun Ra

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
• First ever Sun Ra pipe organ album!

• Cut by Kevin Gray from the restored Sun Ra Arkive master tapes!

• On violet vinyl pressed in the US!

Includes digital pre-order of Excelsior Mill. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

shipping out on or around May 24, 2024

Purchasable with gift card

$26.99 USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
• First ever Sun Ra pipe organ album!

• Cut by Kevin Gray from the restored Sun Ra Arkive master tapes!

• The CD contains the entire uncut show!

Includes digital pre-order of Excelsior Mill. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

shipping out on or around May 24, 2024

Purchasable with gift card

$16.99 USD or more
Streaming + Download

Pre-order of Excelsior Mill. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

Purchasable with gift card

releases May 24, 2024

$10.99 USD or more

1.	Beyond Hiroshima 19:25	buy track
2.	Excelsior
3.	Wurlitzer
4.	Excelsior Terminus

about

The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do. It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you’ll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. Pressed on violet vinyl! The CD contains the full uncut show!

When you’re Sun Ra, you don’t need synthesizers to evoke apocalyptic visions and interstellar excursions. You don’t even need a band.

Ra is most widely known for working with various iterations of his Arkestra, but he was no stranger to unaccompanied keyboard expeditions. His discography contains solo piano albums, solo Fender Rhodes records, and solo recordings on conventional organ, the latter going as far back as his home recordings from the 1940s. But none of those instruments ever offered Sun Ra the kind of sonic artillery that waited beneath his fingers and feet when he sat before the keyboards, pedals, and multicolored constellation of tabs controlling the Wurlitzer pipe organ.

Mystic and magisterial, Ra comes off here like a cross between a demonically riffing ‘50s horror movie villain and a futuristic congregation leader delivering the interplanetary gospel. Brassy stabs provide the kind of punctuation that could be graphically rendered as an endless string of exclamation marks in 500-point font. String-like swoops and swirls dance across the top of the carnage, cooling the flames just enough to keep the whole thing from combusting (for a while at least) but never dousing the fiery fury that Ra draws forth from the instrument.
- Jim Allen

credits

releases May 24, 2024

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about

Sun Ra Birmingham, Alabama

Across the history of jazz, there is no wilder, more future-forward composer and performer than Sun Ra. Known as much for his wild on-stage persona as his innovative compositions, Sun Ra was the avant-garde bleeding edge of the jazz genre, introducing modal composition and electronic instrumentation before almost anyone else. ... more

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I wasn’t sure whether to spring for this, as I have a bootleg CDR. (As well as vinyl). But I couldn’t miss a chance to upgrade fidelity. Anyway, I agree with Philip that this is a decent first choice for a Ra record—you can’t go wrong. There’s a little bit of blues, free , swing, and pure Ra all mixed in. It also showcases june Tyson on “black man” track. She was an overlooked Jazz vocalist, who played so well off of Ra. Gratefulshrink
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Hi Peter.....good work on the 45. Stay safe... big love. Pierce & Linda x EdThrasher
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