Album Review: Sun Ra – Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank

As acclaimed music journalist and critic J.D. Considine emphasizes in his liner notes for Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank, “people were more likely to have heard of [Sun Ra] than they were to have heard his music.” He also notes that the one thing most “knew” about the music of the man from Saturn was that it was “weird.”

There are moments on this new 2CD set that belie that latter assertion; some of it is tuneful in a conventional, mainstream way. But for the most part, the two hours of music documented on this recording of a 1978 concert in Baltimore is as defiantly strange as anything in the man’s catalog.

That doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable. For the adventurous, the music of Sun Ra is delightfully out-there, combining jazz, Afro-futurism (before there was a word for it, as the liner notes remind us) and a wholly unbridled wackiness. The opening “Thunder of Drums” is a case in point: less drums than synthesizer excursion, it establishes right up front that things are gonna get strange. Ra’s facility on the analog instrument is exploratory and fascinating.

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is the classic filtered through the sort of angular dissonance that makes one either love or despise original artists like Thelonious Monk. “They Plan to Leave” features spoken word in counterpoint with sun vocals and melodic vibraphone runs; for listeners raised on rock, it feels like a more serious Frank Zappa. “A Pleasant Place in Space” is Ra soloing on piano, and it’s among the most conventional (yet beautiful) pieces in the set.

Elsewhere, “Images in a Mirror” is equal parts big band blast and clattering cacophony. It’s also a helluva lot of fun. “Space Travelin’ Blues” is perhaps the most accessible entry point into the album, a bouncy, piano-led tune that colors largely within the lines but has a good time doing so.

Sun Ra classics figure into the set here and there. “We Travel the Spaceway” chugs along with chanting mostly built around a single chord. Even when he’s offering his own interpretation of a well-known tune like “‘Round Midnight,” Sun Ra makes it his own.

Considine’s liners, a note from Jazz Detective Zev Feldman and copious stills from Robert Mugge’s Sun Ra documentary A Joyful Noise round out a wonderful package. The set is also available as a 2LP vinyl release.