We're Late For Class: #82 ART JACKSON'S ATROCITY Tribute To Sun Ra (1977) w/guest SUN RA

#82 ART JACKSON'S ATROCITY Tribute To Sun Ra (1977) w/guest SUN RA

Independently released in 1977, Tribute To Sun Ra was the third and final official album from Art Jackson’s Atrocity. Jackson’s original plan for this LP was to enter the studio with material more structured than The Atrocity’s previous releases, a notion supported by this record’s 1976 (pre-sessions) live recording, “The Outer Limits,” taped at the Spot Me A Five Club in East St. Louis. But something happened that would alter Jackson’s intent… a chance meeting with legendary experimental jazz great Sun Ra, whose unexplained presence at the sessions would ultimately transform the LP’s stylistic approach. It was a seismic shift… or, perhaps, just a re-affirmation of Art Jackson’s core, anti-music intuition. Because, instead of tightening the reins, Jackson decided to completely abandon the group’s prepared material, resulting in The Atrocity’s fiercest, most chaotic album to date.

What listeners will hear on Tribute To Sun Ra is an Atrocity untethered by expectations, forged by alchemy and club work, and firing on all cylinders. An aggressive improvisational sonic assault that would even incorporate recordings of Sun Ra himself, whose distinctive vocals pepper the LP with ruminations on interstellar travel, alien space angels, and Ra's thoughts on an adopted planet in flux. These exclusive Sun Ra vocals have never been heard in any other context, and are available here for the first time in over four decades. There is speculation that Saturn’s man-about-town also performed additional keyboard work on the Hendrix suggestion, “6th Stone From The Sun,” but that suspicion has never been verified by Sun Ra’s estate. Tribute To Sun Ra’s cover, by the way, is different from the original 1977 indie LP (see that one here), and is now updated for the digital age.

Listen:

Let The Sacred Music Begin (8:09)
Opening Ceremonies (5:48)
29 Psalms (5:20)
The Outer Limits (Live At The Spot Me A Five Club, 1976) (8:52)
6th Stone From The Sun (5:22)
Hoarse Latitudes/Slave Ships To The New World (8:50)

Art Jackson: guitar
Artis Killins: bass
Pharaoh Keyes: keyboards
Kurtis Snider: drums
Joseph Mix: sax/trumpet/flute
Eric Gaye: sax
Mark Napoleon: percussion
Val Heston: violin
Sun Ra: guest voice

Free 320
LOSSLESS

6 comments:

jim3:06 PM
Do you know how to et an invite to the infinitefool? I had one years ago & lost my password. You can send me an answer at bunky01@comcast.net, please. I really used to enjoy his site.
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We're Late For Class11:38 AM
Sorry Bunky, haven't heard from him. Or you, for that matter, because our email notification was off. There you have it. Thanks/Sorry.
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mb404:58 AM
WoW .. i didn't even realize you were still putting tunes out. it had been from 2015 that i checked up on the page and man what a delight to my eyes. not to mention my ears .. they r floating on the sounds presented here .. on to Andromeda and beyond!! tnx for putting out sounds for everyone to enjoy ..
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We're Late For Class6:21 AM
We were wondering where you were.
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NØ8:42 PM
Well, it hasn't been since 2015 but it's been til now. Didn't know you were still slinging the tuneage. I still listen to my Gout CD & all the archived files, but am overjoyed to get more...AJ Atrocity being some of my favorite. Now married to the incomparable Sun Ra. You all rock. Are you still late or are classes cancelled?
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We're Late For Class8:52 PM
Glad you found us again, NØ. We were afraid you became a Mormon or - worse - started listening to real music, or something. We're happy to see you're still on the dark side. As for classes... we thought we we're late, but it turned out the government closed the schools in the wake of the pandemic. No wonder we're not learning anything.
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PRESS THANKS...

Thanks to the late, great Fred Dellar at MOJO Magazine for mentioning Art Jackson's Atrocity AND We're Late For Class in two separate "Ask Fred" columns, where he called the Atrocity's Gout a "fine, percussion-fuelled, invigorating free-for-all," and also saying, "we at Ask Fred are glad WLFC exist." Thanks Fred!

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Many thanks to Jeff Fitzgerald over at Psychedelic Waves for including Art Jackson's Atrocity in his list of Top 30 Albums of 2019, calling Tribute To Sun Ra... "Some great, exploratory, tripped out Sun Ra inspired free jazz," and "a terrific album." Needless to say, we're shocked. Since we never sent the guy a dime. Thanks Jeff.

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Thanks to Roz Milner for the two interview/articles posted at Bearded Gentlemen Music, "Solving the Mystery of Art Jackson Atrocity’s Gout," and the most recent, "With His Back To The Crowd: Art Jackson’s Atrocity’s Live In Europe - Lost Live Jazz Recording."

We collectively appreciate the creative interest and the well-groomed ink.

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Thanks to It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine for the article, "Maybe It’s Time To Take Art Jackson’s Atrocity Seriously." Maybe.

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AN ACTUAL RECORD REVIEW...

ART JACKSON'S ATROCITY

Gout

(Unreleased 1974 Promo On Columbia Records)

Reviewed by Joe Kenney @

Julian Cope Presents Head Heritage

If, like me, your favorite era of Miles Davis is his electric era, specifically the 1973-1975 years in which Pete Cosey was his guitarist, then you’ve probably wondered why that super-fantastic lineup of his never cut an album together, after Miles decided to retire in late 1975. I mean, they were the greatest group in history, with Pete Cosey’s phenomenal, psychedelic guitar (the man was beyond Hendrix, that’s all there is to it), Reggie Lucas’ wah-wah’d grounding rhythm guitar, Michael Henderson’s dub-like basslines…hell, I can’t go through all of them, but if you know them, you love them. But if you’ve ever wondered what an album by this super group sans Miles would sound like, well my friends, I give you Gout, by Art Jackson’s Atrocity.

Only thing is, you’ll have to hunt the blogs for it. Recorded in 1974, the album was cut as a promo by Columbia, who then went on to drop both the group and the album, which is unreleased to this day. “The horror…the horror…” No one’s sure why (info is slim to none on this group and album), but most rumors have to do with Art Jackson’s drug abuse. In any case, the album has perfect sound quality – the only source is the promo LP, of course, and it sounds phenomenal.

The Miles connection surfaces again: Art Jackson was a twenty year-old guitarist whom Miles Davis himself recommended to Columbia records. Apparently Davis even funded the recording of the album. The Atrocity was put together around Jackson, an 11-member collective of hard-rockin’, psychedelia-lovin’, jazz-playin’ motherfuckers (two saxophonists, four drummers, two keyboardists, a guy on reeds, a guy on bass, a guy on “effects”), none of whom I’ve ever heard of (much like Art Jackson himself).

The five long tracks on Gout center around Jackson’s guitar, and the kid is Pete Cosey reborn; the stuff on here sounds almost identical to what Cosey was performing on the Agharta and Pangaea albums. That same sort of fucked-up, psychedelic distortion which goes from raging and chaotic one moment to spaced-out drones the next, the strange tunings, the works. Only thing is, unlike Cosey, Jackson’s not above playing a power chord or three, so the album packs a definite metal-rock punch. I mean, it’s fantastic, the whole thing.

The superbly-named “Shaft In Afghanistan” opens the album. Jackson’s guitar is on super-fucked mode, sounding like a cyclic tone. The rhythm section lays down a menacing, throbbing track, which Jackson and the sax & reeds proceed to riff over. Jackson soon leaves the actual “song” to the others, instead riffing and roaring with all manner of guitar sounds across the track. He’s everywhere, from wah-wah to thick distortion to cosmic fuzz. Things cool down three minutes in, but it’s only a fake-out; the track comes right back in. Jackson funks it up on wah-wah, with studio-tricked handclaps providing additional percussion. There's all sorts of electronic gimmickry on the album; this isn’t just some quickly recorded demo. This eventually calms down again into a sort of funky ambience – but it’s just another fake-out! The track rips right back up, the drums so superbly recorded (and no doubt closely-miked) that they seem to pound within the caverns of your skull.

“Arabian Fabian” (another great title!) comes in with total menace, until a faux-lite jazz tune pops up. Funky, proto-drum’n’bass drum kit and sax. But this soon becomes something altogether un-lite. Echoed murk creeps across the track, eerie wails, treated reeds, and dubbed-out sax bleats. Those close-up drums kick in and we’re in an altogether heavier, funkier groove. The first half of the track belongs to the Atrocity, with Jackson throwing in brief fills and licks on his mutated guitar. Things collapse into psychedelic ambience at the five-minute mark; free jazz with plinking guitar and tapped cymbal. But ominous guitar fuzz hovers in the distance, a starving wolf preparing to attack. John Carpenter keyboards arise and give the track even more of a horror-movie feel. But it’s a ruse; the piano takes over, playing a melancholy melody as the other instruments recede into the murk. This doesn’t last. Those ultra-loud drums kick the shit out of you again, jumping out of nowhere, and suddenly we’re into the strangest of strange: ambient free jazz with heavy metal drums. The track eventually wears itself out, descending back into the murk from whence it came.

“Available Bush” sounds like some early ‘90s industrial mash, with in-your-face drums and ripping and roaring Ministry-esque guitar. The track throbs on an off-kilter funk grove, Jackson heading the proceedings with the twists and turns of his guitar. The sax plays a faux-Middle Eastern counter-melody to his blasts and blares. The bassist throws in a few snake-like fills of his own, but his instrument sounds anemic compared to Jackson’s acidic distortion. This one humps along for seven minutes which quickly pass by, never establishing anything beyond that off-kilter groove, but never suffering for it.

“Tomato Reign” is the epic of the album, 16+ minutes of cosmic echo and free jazz. It crawls out of the murk in the opening moments, ethereal and disjointed fills from the assembled players. Things continue in this dubbed-out vein for a few minutes; nothing on the level of the Taj Mahal Travelers, but close…along the lines of the last half of Miles’ 1975 shows, when Cosey et al would let it all hang out in improvisatory bouts of experimental noise and abstraction. Pounding, tribal drums which pop out and then disappear. Bleated sax fills which float across the sound spectrum. Even animalistic grunts, growls, and screams from the group. This culminates in ultra-fucked guitar from Jackson, sounding again like some cyclic tone from hell, and then someone (a group member? a sample from some obscure film?) states in the calmest tones, “Fuck her. Let her rot.” A few more minutes of banging, echoed drums and bleating, mournful fills from the sax, and that’s it: the freest noise-skronk ever comes to a close.

“Let’s go!,” someone yells, and we’re straight into the pounding, pissed-off proto-metal of the title track, “Gout.” This is the rock version of the preceding track, another rhythmless excursion into all things free, only packing a wallop in the guitar distortion and overall menace. It pounds and snarls for six minutes, never finding a groove, preferring to live in its own sonic hellhole of chaotic din. Finally it builds to a climax of sorts, with a few final bashes on the drum kit, and the record’s over.

To be fair, you can see why Columbia refused to release this. Gout is the type of album you’d only find on some free jazz label or, if it was recorded today, some ultra-hip indie label. But Columbia in the mid-1970s? Releasing this groundless swell of jazz-metal ambience? Hard to believe. But those master tapes are out there, somewhere, as is the full story of what exactly happened to Art Jackson and his Atrocity. In the meantime, we can only listen to their one recorded album, and wonder.