Sun Ra - The Cymbals/Symbols Sessions: New York City 1973 (Modern Harmonic, 2018)

This is a genuine "lost album" (unlike the Coltrane "ehhh kinda not really" lost album) recorded by Sun Ra and members of the Arkestra in 1973 for Impulse!. Seems the relationship between Ra and Impulse! soured quickly and a couple albums that were scheduled got shelved - Cymbals/Symbols and another one due for a reissue later this year called Crystal Spears. This one is an oddity in a discography of oddities - the Arkestra here is only an 8 piece and they perform mostly in smaller configurations like quartets throughout the album. Stalwart Marshall Allen is completely absent, and John Gilmore only plays on one piece. Strange. The first disc is the actual Cymbal/Symbols album remastered, and the second disc is from an unnamed tape recorded at the same sessions. Given we're looking at a smaller lineup without many mainstays, Cymbals/Symbols is a little flat. It opens with an awkward, stuttering "The World of the Invisible" and then torpedoes into the 16-minute "Thoughts Under a Dark Blue Light" (the one piece feat. Gilmore) and then settles into some relatively nondescript, non-astral boppy Ra jazz. The second disc gets a little loopier - Ra really lets the Moog loose on the incredibly overlong "Myth Evidential" but nothing here really struck a chord with me. Let's see what Crystal Spears is all about later this year.

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Nachtmystium/Leviathan - In the Valley of Death, Where Black Metal is King: An Homage to the Roots (Ascension Monuments Media, 2018)

What the fuck is that title. Okay I get the first part is a Judas Iscariot tribute, but did we really need "an homage to the roots" in there? Hey wouldn't it be funny if these were actually covers of the band The Roots? Anyway. This album was supposed to come out 10 years ago, but it was blocked by the bands' respective labels. Now I guess they've figured out a way, or Blake Judd needs money for drugs so he's figured out a way, to put this out. The Bandcamp version has 8 tracks, 5 from Nachtmystium and 3 from Leviathan, but I've seen a 10-track tracklisting elsewhere. On the version I have, we have Nachtmystium covering Judas Iscariot, Ildjarn (twice), Von and Burzum. Leviathan tackles Ildjarn (twice) and Von once. I seem to be missing Leviathan's Judas Iscariot cover ("Where the Winter Beats Incessant") and one of Nachtmystium's Von covers ("Von"). Weird. Wonder if there were some licensing issues or something. All four Ildjar

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Get Wet with the Animal (Manhand, 2018)

I keep up with Sunburned only intermittently these days, they seem to be taking a more rock-ist approach lately. Like this one. Each track is about 4-5 minutes of pretty ramshackle, jammy, funky, boogie rock...almost spoiled by the throaty, beery vocals shouted over the top of each one of these tunes with nonsensical platitudes. I almost shut it off after a couple tracks but I stuck it out and kinda came around on some level. I was oddly reminded of My War era Black Flag sludge punk. The band sez "these Holy Grail fueled recordings are a mix of iphone and zoom recordings run through garageband, reaper and some plug-ins. We're still working on the much more listener-friendly Black Dirt session..." and point taken, listener friendly this ain't.

Kanye West - Ye (GOOD Music/Def Jam, 2018)

For no real reason other than I guess the fact that he felt he had to put an album out, Ye was cobbled together in a month. And it shows quite plainly. As much as I praised the Ye-produced DAYTONA for making a fully formed album out of a mere 20-odd minutes, here Ye sounds like an odds-n-sods compilation - it literally sounds like a snapshop of a month in the studio with Kanye. Look, I have a lot of time for Kanye('s music). Yeezus is one of the best hip hop albums ever, to say nothing of the classics that preceded it. Obviously most people look at Yeezus as the dividing line between New Kanye and Old Kanye, but I still love it. The Life of Pablo was a little more dicey - it was slipshod, haphazard, scattered, bloated. I was hoping with this new 7-song limit we'd get back to Yeezus-style tightness. Not so much. You can count the good things on this album on one hand - the hooks on "Yikes" and "All Mine", "Ghost Town" which sounds like the only ful

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