Note: this is actually a two-for-one CD that features Sun-Ra’s “Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy” and “Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow” together. There wasn’t room under “Title” to put both.

Well. Mr. Ra used to say, “I’m not interested in history. History is his-story. Mystery is my-story.”

“Cosmic Tones” was recorded in 1963, in New York City; “Art Forms” was recorded in 1961 or 1962. I mention this because when you listen to it, as you must, your jaw will hit the floor and your lower teeth will fly up into your skull from the impact, and as they zip through your brain pan they will find no brain there, because your mind will have been blown.

This music, performed by a jazz band in the early 1960’s, predates Syd Barrett, and occurred long before Tangerine Dream’s “Electronic Meditations.” But you will swear you are listening to a lost kraut/psych classic inspired by both of these. 

Listen to “Adventure-Equation.” Warm splashes of sound are caressed by organ and then assaulted by blasts of horns, which are in their turn swallowed up by giant Binson Echorec-fish and resonate in their titanic bellies, until the echo-fish dissolve from the vibration and their component atoms resolve into a saxophone solo that sounds like Syd Barrett playing sax. 

Then there’s the funky “Moon Dance,” which sounds like the theme to a science fiction detective movie made by Hong Kong occultists on a hashish bender. 

“Solar Drums” is everyone in the band grabbing a percussion instrument except for the man behind the recording desk, who plunges everyone into a swirl of echo until they tip and tremble off each other luminescently, plinking brightly in the dark. 

This CD is one of the most amazing documents of Sun Ra’s foresight. In these two recordings he anticipated — created? — psychedelic music. I would be shocked if some of the early psych masters didn’t secretly have this in their record collections. 

Sun Ra declared himself the Man from Saturn. Until his dying day (literally) he insisted he was from another planet. Listen to this and you may decide he truly was. I cannot emphasise this enough: this is truly, truly an important record for Heads everywhere. See the Kosmos with Sun Ra.