Sun Ra - Pathways to Unknown Worlds

Pathways to Unknown Worlds sends Sun Ra and his Arkestra into deep space without a map, a 1973 session that ranks among the boldest records he made in that decade.

It reached a wider audience in 1975 through Impulse!, which brought several of Sun Ra's self-released Saturn albums into record shops beyond his own network. The lineup is a who's who of Arkestra regulars, with John Gilmore, Marshall Allen and Danny Davis leading the reeds, Ronnie Boykins on bass and Clifford Jarvis on drums, plus a small army of percussionists.

The title piece unfolds over more than twelve minutes of churning percussion, squalling horns and Sun Ra's swirling keyboard textures, building and dissolving like weather systems on another planet. Extension Out pushes the ensemble into fierce collective improvisation, and Cosmo-Media drifts through stranger, more spacious territory where every sound seems to hang in the air.

There are no standards or swing tunes here, only pure exploration, and the band follows its leader with total trust, wherever the music decides to go.

For adventurous listeners, this is Sun Ra at his most uncompromising and thrilling. It is a record to surrender to rather than analyse, and it sounds as far-out today as it did on release.