Hard on the heels of The Magic City, which was compered by Meshell Ndegeocello for release in April, and last year’s incendiary pulling apart of ‘Nuclear War’, the nonprofit Red Hot which combats AIDS and promotes equal access to healthcare through pop-culture collaborations unleashes the most jam-packed volume to date in its ongoing series of reinterpretations of works by the great Sun Ra.
Through loose covers and a few inspired original compositions, Kronos Quartet assemble an accomplished yet furiously ragtag band of interstellar time travellers for Outer Spaceways Incorporated, from the raspy compulsions of Georgia Anne Muldrow on the album opener and title track to the Indiana producer Jlin’s dramatic string flourishes, yelping scratches and hand drums, and from the celestial squiggles of reversed kalimba and electric autoharp as the new age maestro Laraaji samples the early Sun Ra track ‘Daddy’s Gonna Tell You No Lie’ with the Cosmic Rays and their doo-wop vocals, fortifying the sound through trance-like waves of synthesizer, to the staticky orchestral swells of Zachary James Watkins and the synthetic trumpet fanfare which introduces the footwork pioneer RP Boo and the backwoods hip hop duo Armand Hammer, who dig in and stretch out over a patchwork of thudding kicks and skittering snares.
Outer Spaceways Incorporated also features three cuts by Laurie Anderson and Marshall Allen, the formidable performance artist whose latest album of lilting spoken word Amelia was announced just this past week, and the veteran free jazz saxophonist and longtime bandleader of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Meanwhile on tracks like ‘Daddy’s Gonna Tell You No Lie’ and ‘The Furthest Out Things’ where Nicole Lizée lives up to the title through a dizzying array of Omnichord, paper poppers, keys and kazoo, the strings of Kronos Quartet are sometimes buried well within the mix to add a holographic dimensionality to the fusion comedowns and deep grooves.
On the shadowy and applause-ridden ‘Secrets of the Sun’ the trio of 700 Bliss, Moor Mother and DJ Haram pay tribute to Allen, who is 100 years old yet still bears his ‘hands stretched out into future’, while the organ-and-percussive funk of Secret Chiefs 3 and their leader Trey Spruance, who dabble variously in everything from avant-garde metal to klezmer to surf rock, here buttressed by Tim Smolens’ springy bass lines and characterised by instruments like the Jenco Celeste and the Yamaha Electone YC-20, develops through stages to reveal a squelchy and sloshing, ska-styled schmooze. After a typically clangorous interlude from the instrument builder and visceral noisemaker Evicshen, the album closes with a stellar outing from the renowned minimalist Terry Riley and his self-styled disciple Sara Miyamoto of the mood punk band AWAW (be) and the improvisational trio Anomalocaris, who return to the cascading rhythms and caustic call-and-response lyricism of ‘Nuclear War’ with a strung-out yet sublimated rejoinder to ‘Kiss Yo’ Ass Goodbye’.
