a collection of 2 classic Sun Ra albums - Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow & Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy - both key transitional albums in the Sun Ra catalog, Art Forms - was produced in two sessions shortly after the bandleader's 1961 migration from Chicago to New York (with a brief stopover in Montreal). One of about a dozen Arkestra albums compiled from recordings made at the Choreographer's Workshop, Art Forms displays Sun Ra's increasing tendency to juxtapose stylistic incongruities on vinyl in the interests of showcasing his versatility...

After arriving in Gotham, Sunny set about broadening his resume by reinventing older jazz and blues forms while edging towards tomorrow's dimensions. "Cluster of Galaxies" and "Solar Drums" are modernistic percussion soundscapes, bracketing "Ankh #1," a swaggering R&B rework of a late '50s tune from the artist's Chicago years. "The Outer Heavens," sans rhythm section, echoes Third Stream chamber jazz, while "Infinity of the Universe" offsets a percussion battalion with thunderous low-register piano. "Lights on a Satellite" and "Kosmos in Blue," both recorded at an earlier Choreographer's session, ground the set on terra firma with some stylish hard bop. "Lights" remained a staple in Sunny's concert repertoire for the rest of his life.

Like many albums recorded during this period, Art Forms was not released on Saturn until several years later (1965), by which time Sun Ra's repertoire and concerts had progressed beyond conventional jazz forms. ("Lights on a Satellite" and "Kosmos in Blue" were recorded at the late 1961 session from which emerged the Bad & Beautiful album—which was not released until 1972.) Like all Choreographer's sessions, the ad hoc acoustics painted the proceedings with a raw, warehouse ambience—what we call "Garage Jazz."

Art Forms is one of the first Saturn releases to feature what became a trademark effect on many Sun Ra recordings during the 1960s: an otherworldly reverb courtesy drummer Tommy Hunter's open-reel tape deck. Hunter discovered the process while testing the unit during a band warm-up. He ran a cable from the output back through the input, creating a mind-bending feedback loop that could be shaped by adjusting the volume of the playback knob. You can hear Hunter's alchemy on "Cluster of Galaxies" and "Solar Drums." Tommy was initially apprehensive that Sun Ra might be furious at the cacophony, but when he heard it, the bandleader was delighted. The reverb became a recurring instrument in the band's lineup (and later an overused gimmick in psychedelic rock). It is, by serendipity, Sun Ra's initial foray into experimental electronic music.


Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy is one of the more notorious of the artist's early New York releases. It near-completely rejects existing notions of jazz in favor of conducted chaos, offering a template for the unknown. Therapeutic for some, electroshock for others. In its lysergic abstractness, Cosmic Tones prefigures by a few years the outer dimensions of psychedelia (which was inspired by psychosis-replicating chemicals), and foreshadows some of the wilder studio escapades of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. (Early in their careers—though a decade apart—Zappa and Sun Ra shared a producer: Tom Wilson.)

The album—or at least its title—may have originated when Sun Ra's manager Alton Abraham arranged a performance for patients at a Chicago psychiatric facility. Biographer John Szwed, in his definitive Ra bio Space Is the Place, describes the scene:

"The group of patients assembled for this early experiment in musical therapy included catatonics and severe schizophrenics, but Sunny approached the job like any other, making no concessions in his music. While he was playing, a woman who it was said had not moved or spoken for years got up from the floor, walked directly to his piano, and cried out, ‘Do you call that music?’ Sunny was delighted with her response and told the story for years afterwards as evidence of the healing powers of music."