Sun Ra & His Astro Infinity Arkestra
Strange Strings (expanded Edition) (2lp)
Fans of Sun Ra's space bop and genre-bending jazz were in for a shock with 'Strange Strings.' Even in the eclectic and sometimes baffling Sun Ra catalog, 'Strange Strings,' first issued in 1967, is an outlier. Is it music, or just noise? Or noise as music? John Cage could not be reached for comment. For this album, Sun Ra collected an arsenal of exotic string instruments and handed them out to his Arkestra on the precept that "strings could touch people in a special way." That the Arkestrans didn't know how to play or tune these instruments was not beside the point - it was the point. Ra framed it "a study in ignorance." The result was primitive, yet sophisticated; brutal, yet highly sensitive. In his essay for this expanded edition, musician-curator David Toop calls Strange Strings "saturated in mystery." The original 1967 Saturn LP version was monophonic, contained three tracks, and suffered distortion in the mastering (perhaps due to the high-decibel studio performance and excessive reverb). Yet some sessions were captured in stereo. A dozen strange-string works have been located, five of which are included on this remastered edition. No track titles appeared on the original Saturn LP verso, but the three works issued were later identified as 'World's Approaching,' the LP title track, and an inversion of the title, 'Strings Strange.' A belatedly discovered tape box listed the third recording as 'Strange Strange,' a title which has been used in this edition.