Sun Ra - Prophète [Red]

Prophet is a lost Sun Ra session that finally reaches earth, on red vinyl, and quite possibly the only day he recorded on the keyboard that gives it his name.

Sun Ra released hundreds of records over half a century, most recorded live or in improvised venues like the Choreographer's Workshop in the early 1960s in New York. This one is different. In 1986, he took the Arkestra to Mission Control, a 24-track studio north of Boston, stocked with every electronic sound generator possible, and among them was a brand new Prophet VS, the Vector Synthesizer. There's no evidence that Ra has touched a Prophet-5 or Prophet-10 before, so this is a man in his 60s encountering a machine for the first time and simply following it wherever it goes. The name probably appealed to him too. That's always been the case.

The Prophet opens the session with Ra circling around the timbres of the instrument like someone testing ice, and Infinity Excursion extends into exactly the interstellar drift that the title announces. The Prophet at Play is the most laid-back and funniest track here, while They Plan to Leave and They'll Come Back close the day as a duet, departure and return, the theme of his entire career in miniature.

It was all recorded in a single day, and it took decades for it to happen.