The planets align as the mighty Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of the maestro Marshall Allen, are releasing their first studio album in over twenty years, ‘Swirling’.

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. The sprawling, suite-like 20-minute title track sustains a lyrical edge in spite of an open framework and textures, which encourage sonorities to surface and emerge from the band as if there was no human intention behind them. In opposition to “Nuclear War,” Ra's organ playing here was built less on bombast and sonic terror than it is on whispers, stutters, shivers, and swells. Fireside Chat offers a wide stylistic array, as was the artist’s intent, reflecting his eclectic, seemingly irreconcilable approach to compositional extremes. With Sun Ra you get everything… except predictability.

A celestial journey is what Sun Ra and His Arkestra created with Space is the Place. Sun Ra’s opus, at its simplest, is a trip through outer-bound melodies, planetary bodies, eras in time, crystals, and space caravans. You will be transported a world away!

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.

Featuring what may be his only recordings on the Prophet keyboard, these once lost performances expand the omniverse of Ra across a stellar set of lengthy cuts! All recorded in a single day and finally making their terrestrial debut!

Sun Ra, as well as anyone, proved that an artist could change with the times without being a dedicated follower of fashion. In fact, Ra and his music never stopped evolving. A series of albums recorded from 1978 to 1980—Lanquidity, On Jupiter, Sleeping Beauty, and Strange Celestial Road—demonstrate the influence on Ra of musical and production trends of the mid- and late-1970s, especially heavy, studio-enhanced dance floor grooves (traceable from soul and funk to disco), and atmospheric New Age "dream" pieces. But Ra never fully surrendered to these trends; it's arguable that he even embraced them. He adapted techniques, but what he created amounted more to reinventions than "File Under" genre works.

Every Sun Ra album is unique. Yet even by Ra's standards, DISCO 3000 is an outlier. However, it sits comfortably in the Sun Ra discography — because it's weird.

Strut presents the 4CD edition of Sun Ra's 'Egypt 1971', documenting Sun Ra's first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971.

The impact and significance of these few weeks upon Sun Ra can be measured by the growth and development of his output over the next few years; the immediate post-Egypt period included new studio and live recordings on the Saturn, Blue Thumb, Atlantic and Impulse labels and the ‘Space Is The Place’ movie. Ra also edited the three LPs of the ‘Live In Egypt’ series which were subsequently released on his Saturn record label and its affiliated twin, Thoth Intergalactic: ‘Dark Myth Equation Visitation’, ‘Nidhamu’ and ‘Horizon’. This 4CD set features these albums alongside previously unreleased material from the December 1971 recordings. All tracks are remastered from the original tapes.