Though the great and gloriously weird Sun Ra may have departed this planet in a bodily sense back in 1993, his ghost Arkestra plays on, now under the direction of veteran saxophonist Marshall Allen, one of Ra’s original lieutenants and a staunch defender of his legacy.
Live at Babylon is 2014 performance from a club in Istanbul. It captures that utterly unique mixture of old-school New York swing, New Orleans collective improv and Chicago avant-garde howling that made this longtime collective a minor but important influence on successive generations of jazz musicians.
The high energy set ticks all the Sun Ra boxes, both musically and politically, and includes a version of Ra's signature tune, Saturn, from whence, presumably, the great one is still listening and signalling his approval.
