Republic of Music

Sun Ra - Lanquidity (Definitive Edition)

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Sun Ra's Lanquidity might be the friendliest door into his sprawling cosmos. Recorded with the Arkestra in the late seventies, it trades the free-jazz turbulence he's known for towards something warmer and looser, a haze of wah-wah guitar, electric piano and loping funk rhythms that drifts closer to disco and deep space fusion than big-band swing. Tracks like 'Where Pathways Meet' and the title cut unfold slowly, patient grooves built for late nights rather than dancefloors. This Definitive Edition gathers the record's various mixes and session variants together properly for the first time, letting you hear how the Arkestra reshaped the same ideas across different takes. An essential entry point for anyone curious about Sun Ra beyond the myth, and a genuine favourite for records-with-coffee mornings.

Tracklist

Lanquidity
Where Pathways Meet
That's How I Feel
Twin Stars Of Thence
There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)

Details

Release Date: 1st January 1978

Why We Love It

Lanquidity is Sun Ra at his most relaxed and most spacious, made in one overnight session straight after the Arkestra played Saturday Night Live. It's looser and warmer than his more famously cosmic, chaotic records — five long, unhurried pieces built from ad hoc jams and horn charts sketched on the spot, drifting through funk, fusion and free jazz without ever settling in one place for long. It's a genuinely welcoming entry point into an artist whose vast catalogue can otherwise feel intimidating, and one of the most purely pleasurable records in the wider spiritual jazz canon.

Sam's Note

If Sun Ra's reputation has ever put you off, start here. This is his most approachable record by some distance.

Sounds Like

• Pharoah Sanders
• Alice Coltrane
• Herbie Hancock (Headhunters era)
• Miles Davis (electric era)

Mood

• Warm
• Loose
• Cosmic
• Groove-led

Perfect For

• Sunday mornings
• Cooking
• Late-night listening

12 Bar Listening Guide

First Listen

Reveals More

Atmosphere

Originality

Why This Album Matters

Recorded overnight on 17 July 1978 at Blank Tapes in New York, directly after the Arkestra's appearance on Saturday Night Live, Lanquidity was originally released that year on the small Philly Jazz label. Long treasured by collectors and reissued several times since, including definitive editions by Strut Records, it's now regarded as one of the most accessible and purely enjoyable entries in Sun Ra's vast, wildly uneven discography, and a genuine gateway record into spiritual and cosmic jazz for listeners unsure where to start with him.

Sun Ra was a bandleader, pianist and philosopher who claimed to have travelled from Saturn, and spent five decades leading his Arkestra through a vast, ever-shifting body of work that fused free jazz, big band swing, electronics and Afrofuturist cosmology. Equal parts showman and visionary, he remains one of the most singular and influential figures in twentieth-century American music, with a discography so large that records like Lanquidity serve as valuable, welcoming entry points.

Ad hoc jams and horn charts sketched overnight, drifting through funk, fusion and free jazz.

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