Secrets of the Sun [Bonus Track]

Review

Secrets of the Sun consists of sessions recorded by drummer Tommy "Bugs" Hunter in 1962 at the Choreographer's Workshop in New York City, the Arkestra's regular rehearsal studio. Since they had only recently moved to New York (some decided to stay in Chicago), these are small-group Arkestra recordings. This is an interesting transitional album because you can still hear echoes of the Chicago sound in some of the pieces, but the sound is growing beyond merely "exotic," with percussion playing an increasingly larger role and the pieces starting to sound more amorphous. "The Friendly Galaxy" has the same sort of mysterious vibe as "Ancient Aetheopia" with nice trumpet and piano work as well as John Gilmore on bass clarinet (which he plays on a couple cuts). "Solar Differentials" has a similar but weirder feel because the horns change to "Space Bird Sounds" and Art Jenkins adds some of his distinctive "Space Voice." "Space Aura" is built on a great horn riff, while both Gilmore (again on bass clarinet) and Sun Ra both shine on a stripped-down version of "Love in Outer Space." Things head a bit more out for the last couple tracks, where percussion and reverb start to dominate the sound, as they would on several of the Choreographer Workshop recordings. This is an interesting album for Ra fans because it's such a small band and shows how new ideas were taking hold in the music, not to mention Gilmore's use of bass clarinet, which he stopped playing completely sometime in the '60s. [The Atavistic reissue adds a track from the same time period that was originally slated to be one side of a Saturn album that was never released prior to this. "Flight to Mars" is a fascinating piece on a number of fronts. If it was actually recorded in 1962 with the rest of this album (and the listed personnel seems to bear this out), it would certainly be one of the earliest recorded examples (if not the earliest) of this type of side-long extended piece. It's also probably the earliest piece to have a tape splice, as the very beginning has a clumsy edit into a performance of "Somewhere in Space" (almost certainly the version that ended up on Out There a Minute) before the electric guitar (!) of Calvin Newborn performs a "lift-off" sound effect. From there, the band goes into a fantastic uptempo swinging number with some killer drumming from C. Scoby Stroman. Everyone gets some great solo space, but Ra is out of this world on piano. Piano and drums trade off, as do tenor and the arco bass of Ronnie Boykins while Newborn does some really cool comping on muted strings. For Ra fans, this track alone would be worth the price of admission; it's that good and makes the long-awaited reissue of Secrets of the Sun well worth it.] ~ Sean Westergaard, All Music Guide

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