Name: It's After The End Of The World
Brand: Sun Ra

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

0215917MSW

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-02-25

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Proper

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

4029759159179

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Total Cap

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Sun Ra

Genre GB

Jazz

Label GB

MPS is a German jazz label that was founded in 1968 by Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer. It started as a successor to SABA and quickly gained recognition for its exceptional sound quality. Often compared to the renowned Blue Note label, MPS became known as Most Perfect Sound.

From 1971 onwards, MPS releases were distributed by BASF and later by Metronome Records GmbH (renamed Metronome Musik GmbH in 1977). However, in 1983, due to declining budgets for recording jazz music, Brunner-Schwer shifted his focus to classical music and sold the rights of MPS to Philips. Eventually, the label found its way under Polydor's ownership and its recordings were re-released by Motor Music starting from 1993.

In Hamburg, Universal Jazz Germany took over the MPS archives in 1999 while Speakers Corner Records released various vinyl reissues. After ten years since Brunner-Schwer's passing, Edel acquired MPS's back catalogue from Universal on January 7th, 2014. Now led by Andreas Brunner-Schwer and Friedhelm Schulz, the team has returned to Villingen where they continue recording new material.

Sun Ra, born Herman Blount in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, was an American Free-Jazz composer, pianist and band leader. He was a pioneer of free improvisation and modal jazz, as well as an early user of electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Sun Ra's music innovations and visionary experiences set him apart as a true musical innovator. He formed the Sun Ra Arkestra in the 1950s and continued to compose and perform until his death in 1993.Born and raised in Alabama, Sun Ra showed exceptional talent as a pianist from a young age. By the age of 11, he could sight-read and compose music. As a teenager, he performed with local jazz and R&amp;B bands before taking on his first full-time musical job leading the Sonny Blount Orchestra. In the mid-1930s, Sun Ra had a transformative experience during deep meditation where he claimed to have been transported to Saturn by beings from outer space who tasked him with spreading peace through music.

“I play space music. When one day humans on far away planets hear the sounds of cosmic beings, the music will seem familiar, for while they were on Earth they had heard Sun Ra.” So Herman Poole Blount proclaimed well over 50 years ago. The ex-Fletcher Henderson pianist changed his name to Sun Ra and formed an “Intergalactic Research Arkestra”. 

The avant-garde big band, which also incorporated elements of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, divided the jazz world. It wasn’t just the music that caused the uproar: Sun Ra’s musical commune drew in dancers and fire-eaters, and the band performed in outlandish costumes. Quite a few critics considered the man who had taken on the name of the Egyptian sun god to be a charlatan. However, the German jazz authority Joachim-Ernst Berendt recognized “old blues and gospel songs, African highlife dances and Egyptian marches, negro minstrel shows and voodoo rituals” in his music. Sun Ra could thank the benediction of Germany’s jazz high-priest for the black jazz guru’s invitations to the 1970 Donaueschinger Jazz Days as well as the Berlin Jazz Festival. 

This MPS Album was produced from the recordings of these concerts. They are certainly a documentation of jazz history; with an unusual instrumentation, the 21 piece band creates noises and percussive sounds that are out of this world. Sun Ra died in 1993.

It's After The End Of The World

Music GB