Sun Ra Arkestra – Sunrise In Different Dimensions (1980)

"Sunrise In Different Dimensions" is a 1980 live jazz album by the Sun Ra Arkestra documenting a concert at the Gasthof Morhen in Willisau, Switzerland from February 24, 1980. The album intermingles a variety of Sun Ra originals with covers of jazz standards.

This was the opening date on a European concert tour. The album was issued  in several different configurations, with tracks dropped on certain reissues.

Critical response to the album has been largely positive, with some dissent. In a 1983 review of the album, The Boston Globe described it as a "tour de force", "one of Sun Ra's best." Scott Yanow in his Allmusic review characterized it as "one of the better examples of [Sun Ra's] late-period band." Ajay Heble, author of "Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice", indicates that the album "does seem to me to do justice to the energy of Ra's performances." 

The album is featured in the 2000 book "The Essential Jazz Records: Modernism to Postmodernism", where contributor Eric Thacker indicates that it is the cover songs that establish the record's "value as a breathless and windswept view astern from a supersonic jazz roadster's dickey-seat". Fred Kaplan, in Slate, described Sun Ra's arrangements here of Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins and Jelly Roll Morton as "inspired". But critic Stanley Crouch finds the band in this performance "woefully out of tune and botching the leader's arrangements".


Tracklist:

"Light from a Hidden Sun" – 3:52
"Pin-Points of Spiral Prisms" – 4:41
"Silhouettes of the Shadow World" – 7:20
"Cocktails for Two" (Sam Coslow, Arthur Johnston) – 3:21
"'Round Midnight" (Bernie Hanighen, Thelonious Monk, Cootie Williams) – 6:39
"Lady Bird/Half Nelson" (Tadd Dameron, Miles Davis) – 7:58
"Big John's Special" (Horace Henderson) – 3:37
"Yeah Man!" (Fletcher Henderson, Noble Sissle) – 3:29
"Disguised Gods in Skullduggery Rendez Vous" – 9:05
"Queer Notions" (Coleman Hawkins) – 2:44
"Limehouse Blues" (Philip Braham, Douglas Furber) – 3:44
"King Porter Stomp" (Jelly Roll Morton) – 3:32
"Take the "A" Train" (Billy Strayhorn) – 5:07
"Lightin'" (Duke Ellington) – 2:43
"A Helio-Hello! And Goodbye Too!" – 3:12


Sun Ra Arkestra – Sunrise In Different Dimensions (1980)
(320 kbps, cover art included)