Sun Ra - Crystal Spears - VINYL LP

Deftones have always defined boundless creativity in the music space. Across nine studio albums, they have carved out an unmistakable sonic identity - ferocious yet dreamlike, while making space for constant refinement and surprise. Now, decades on from the groove-forward sound of their era-defining debut, Adrenaline, and following a long line of masterpieces including 2000's White Pony, 2010's Diamond Eyes and 2020's Ohms- an album that earned them their second and third Grammy nominations - they return with one of the most focused statements of their career private music. Joining the band's creative core of Chino Moreno, Stephen Carpenter, Abe Cunningham and Frank Delgado (as well as touring bassist Fred Sablan, who appears on the album) is producer Nick Raskulinecz, who previously worked on Diamond Eyes and 2012's riveting Koi No Yokan. The result is a lean, masterfully paced 11-song set that plays like a new Deftones benchmark. Meditating on the beauty and peril of nature, the challenge of cultivating a positive mindset and visions of a journey beyond the physical realm, private music showcases Deftones at their most evolved. At once a psychedelic voyage and a skull-rattling wallop, it's the latest peak in a catalog filled with immersive, emotive triumphs.

Sun Ra, the extraordinary, outlandish, and sometimes controversial pianist, is often described as an Inchacquired tasteInch, with a massive and diverse catalog. This is a good place to start for uninitiated or dismissive listeners. The album showcases Ra's grounding in the jazz tradition, with unique takes on standards like InchTime After Time,Inch InchEasy to Love,Inch and InchBut Not for MeInch. Not unordinary for Sun Ra, the recording process was informal; InchCan This Be Love?Inch was recorded in his Chicago apartment in 1955; he is accompanied only by the great Wilbur Ware on bass. The other five tracks, which feature, among others, Ra's longtime associate John Gilmore on tenor saxophone, were recorded at the Choreographer's Workshop rehearsal space in 1962 and 1963.

Double yellow colored vinyl LP pressing. Sun Ra was a master of misdirection. Tape boxes wrongly labeled-whether by accident or design-are legendary among Ra archivists. One can speculate about the artist's intent or carelessness, but source misinformation abounds on Ra tape cases, album jackets, cassettes, ephemera-as well as in interviews. It's as if Ra, in furtherance of his own mythmaking, wanted to keep historians guessing. This project began as a misidentified tape discovered by Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive. The 7-inch reel, which contained a live Ra solo piano performance of 11 works-some recognizable, others not-was of stellar quality, and was marked as a 1979 Carnegie Hall date. But the program on the tape did not align with known facts (e.g., titles played, concert duration) which were chronicled in a Newsday review of Ra's appearance at Carnegie in September of that year. With a prod from writer/historian Ted Gioia and further research by myself, the tape was eventually identified as a mostly unreleased July 1977 performance by Ra at a downtown NYC Inchjazz caféInch called The Axis-in-Soho.