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Sun Ra's 'The Magic City' To Be Remastered And Reissued On Vinyl
Sun Ra's 'The Magic City' To Be Remastered And Reissued On Vinyl
Photo Credit: David Corio for Redferns

Sun Ra's 'The Magic City' To Be Remastered And Reissued On Vinyl

Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, Lion Babe, Thundercat, SZA & More Rock The Afropunk Festival 2015 in Brooklyn, NY. Photo Credit: David Corio for Redferns

Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra's The Magic City is being reissued on vinyl by Cosmic Myth Records.

A seminal album from the prolific jazz artist, The Magic City's original 1966 pressing was monophonic, with subsequent reissues having technical pressing errors on the b-side or used reprocessed stereo. However, this latest release is remastered from original stereo sources.

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The reissue will include the 27-minute long titular track, as well as the album's three other tracks: "The Shadow World," "Abstract Eye," and "Abstract I."

The Magic City ultimately became one of Sun Ra's best albums, with virtuosic jazz musician experimenting with avant-garde jazz music. As Jazzwise contributor Edwin Pouncey once wrote about the album:

Made up of four multi-dimensional sounding pieces of music, The Magic City is partly Sun Ra’s reflection on the city of Birmingham, Alabama where he was born and raised. Few, however, could have foreseen the dramatic musical change that Ra had in mind when composing this music, a senses altering series of sonic experiments that took his music to another level of creativity. Alongside the epic title track – and the shorter sound poems 'Abstract Eye' and 'Abstract I' – the centerpiece here is 'The Shadow World,' a frantic fusion of jazz and avant-garde classical music that still sounds totally unique.

The vinyl, which drops on August 4, is available to pre-order here.