As live, late-1970s Sun Ra albums go, Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a cut above. It's similar to and contemporaneous with The Soul Vibrations of Man and Taking a Chance on Chances, two live sets also issued on Saturn in 1977 (and available in our remastered digital catalog).

Originally issued back in 1966 'When Angels Speak of Love' shows Sun Ra and his ever-morphing Arkestra on top 'out' form, as he plays gong and pianoforte against cavernous echo effects which become yet another instrument in his repertoire. The liner notes comment on how conscious he was that his music wasn't 'free' ('because nobody is free'), but you'd be forgiven for lumping this in with Albert Ayler and such other greats of free music.

Omniverse, recorded in New York in 1979 and released that year on Sun Ra's Saturn label, has been gathering dust for too long. It's a fine, overlooked item in the vast Ra catalog. The tracks aren't so much compositions as they are excursions, with only a few memorable themes or recurring motifs. It's pure jazz, somewhat "inside" (for Sun Ra), with little of the aggressiveness and confrontation for which the bandleader was known. (Track 5, "Visitant of the Ninth Ultimate," is an exception.) Omniverse is a very intimate album, offering lots of reflective piano in trio, quartet, and quintet settings, with spare horns. But instead of exhibiting a keyboard showcase, Sun Ra engages in dynamic interplay with the rhythm section. Moreover, the horns are featured largely as soloists; there are few ensemble passages.

Celestial Love contains recordings made in September 1982 at New York's Variety Studios, which had hosted countless Sun Ra sessions since the late 1960s. This was one of the last extended sessions at Variety, and these recordings were the last studio works released on Sun Ra's own Saturn label (though the label did continue to press concert recordings, and new studio recordings did appear on other labels).

An F-bomb saturated hip-hop call & response club cut…from Sun Ra?! While the most renown track in this omniversal opus is the atomic expletive-filled repartee "Nuclear War," there is so much more to this dark mysterious journey through the mind of Sun Ra.

Universe in Blue, a collection of undated live club performances by Sun Ra & His Blue Universe Arkestra, was issued in small-run pressings with two different LP covers on Sun Ra's Saturn label in 1972. Until now it has never been officially reissued on LP or CD.

Recorded live at Storyville jazz club, New York, October 24 & 29, 1977. Quite simply one of Sun Ra's best live albums. This rare recording (originally on Horo records) finds Ra, along with a 19-piece Arkestra, playing a mix of his own compositions ('Images' and 'Lights') along with several jazz standards (including Jelly Roll Morton's 'King Porter Stomp' and Duke Ellington's 'Lightnin''). While Ra's own compositions were usually more avant-garde affairs, he always revelled in playing the classics as well in an effort to give his audience a lesson in jazz history."