• (expanded) 2-lp edition
• Packed in tip-on Stoughton gatefold jacket

Fans of Sun Ra's Space Bop and genre-bending jazz were in for a shock with Strange Strings. Even in the eclectic and sometimes baffling Sun Ra catalog, Strange Strings, first issued in 1967, is an outlier. Is it music, or just noise? Or noise as music? John Cage could not be reached for comment.

For this album, Sun Ra collected an arsenal of exotic string instruments and handed them out to his Arkestra on the precept that "strings could touch people in a special way." That the Arkestrans didn't know how to play or tune these instruments was not beside the point— it was the point. Ra framed it "a study in ignorance." The result was primitive, yet sophisticated; brutal, yet highly sensitive. In his essay for this expanded edition, musician-curator David Toop calls Strange Strings "saturated in mystery."

PERSONNEL:

Sun Ra - (piano strings,  electric piano)
Marshall Allen - (oboe, alto saxophone, piccolo, strings)
John Gilmore - (tenor saxophone, strings)
Danny Davis - (flute, alto saxophone, strings)
Pat Patrick - (flute, baritone saxophone, strings)
Robert Cummings - (bass clarinet, strings)
Ali Hassan - (trombone, strings)
Carl Nimrod - (strings, percussion)
Ronnie Boykins - (bass, viola, dutar)
Clifford Jarvis - (drums, tympani, percussion)
James Jacson - (log drums, strings)

LP ONE:

A1. World’s Approaching (stereo) 10:08
A2. Strings Strange (mono) 12:25

B1. Strange Strange (mono) 8:33
________________________________

LP TWO:

C1. Crystal Spheres (Between Worlds) (stereo) 9:32
C2. Cosmos Miraculous (mono) 11:10

D1. Untitled St. Peter’s (stereo) 8:32
D2. Moon Orbit (mono) 6:35
D3. Ra Explains the Bandura (mono) 6:10