Art Jackson's Atrocity - Tribute To Sun Ra (2019)

Independently released in 1977, TRIBUTE TO SUN RA was the third and final official album from Art Jackson’s Atrocity. Jackson’s original plan for this LP was to enter the studio with material more structured than The Atrocity’s previous releases, a notion supported by this record’s 1976 (pre-sessions) live recording, “The Outer Limits,” taped at the Spot Me A Five Club in East St. Louis. But something happened that would alter Jackson’s intent… a chance meeting with legendary experimental jazz great Sun Ra, whose unexplained presence at the sessions would ultimately transform the LP’s stylistic approach. It was a seismic shift… or, perhaps, just a re-affirmation of Art Jackson’s core, anti-music intuition. Because, instead of tightening the reins, Jackson decided to completely abandon the group’s prepared material, resulting in The Atrocity’s fiercest, most chaotic album to date.
What listeners will hear on TRIBUTE TO SUN RA is an Atrocity untethered by expectations, forged by alchemy and club work, and firing on all cylinders. An aggressive improvisational sonic assault that would even incorporate recordings of Sun Ra himself, whose distinctive vocals pepper the LP with ruminations on interstellar travel, alien space angels, and Ra's thoughts on an adopted planet in flux. These EXCLUSIVE Sun Ra vocals have NEVER been heard in any other context, and are available here for the first time in over four decades. There is speculation that Saturn’s man-about-town also performed additional keyboard work on the Hendrix suggestion, “6th Stone From The Sun,” but that suspicion has never been verified by Sun Ra’s estate.