Excelsior Mill

Excelsior Mill unearths a 1984 Sun Ra performance on a massive Wurlitzer pipe organ at a club in Atlanta. The 42-minute improvisation is brash, blown-out, and truly bizarre, even by Sun Ras standards. It resembles the soundtrack to a vintage low-budget horror thriller played on a malfunctioning calliope, constantly punctuated with violent bursts of sound, somehow made even more sinister by the chintzy, mechanical percussion. The title of the first part, "Beyond Hiroshima," recalls Ras infamous "Nuclear War" single, yet in its own way, this sounds even more apocalyptic. Its overwhelming and frightening in the best way possible. "Excelsior," the second part, is somewhat lighter and more chiming, but it becomes filled with hair-raising turns and explosions, at one point landing at a particularly unsettling train-whistle wheeze. Truly chaotic and unhinged, Excelsior Mill is a fascinating document of a singular event, sure to take even longtime Sun Ra fanatics by surprise. ~ Paul Simpson