It’s really difficult to discuss Sun Ra – or his music – without using some string of adjectives that basically means weird. Of course, if that’s all one has taken away after listening to his work, than the point of it all has been lost. But still, he’s kinda weird. That’s not good or bad. But it probably informed a vast many decisions that he made regarding composition as well as his choice to use an electric keyboard before most folks in the United States knew what that even was.

Some describe his work as free jazz – a term Sun Ra didn’t embrace. And while that might not be the worst way in which to figure this music, there are an innumerable facets to Sun Ra’s music that defy that categorization. Over his career, the music and the setting it was voiced in varied greatly. But by the mid ‘60s the composer had settled on the sound that would take him through the following decade.

Still utilizing large groups as in his Chicago period, the new New Yorker contrived a duo of recording dates that, while similar, aren’t exactly the same. Both studio volumes of The Heliocentric Worlds (the third volume is a live recording) are given to spontaneous moments of group improv, but the tracking on each reveals a marked difference. On the first volume, while each track pushes past pop song length, there aren’t any enormously long songs contrasted by the fact that the two main sections of volume two are around fifteen minutes apiece.

That doesn’t mean that the music on each disc is drastically different, but it does mean that each individual idea is explored differently. What the two volumes do have in common, though, is tied to an Ornette Coleman outing from 1960 entitled Free Jazz. That disc sported eight players, split into two quintets. And while the first volume of The Heliocentric Worlds has a few more players than the, volume two is comprised of eight players. Beyond the line ups, though, both discs by Sun Ra have a good deal of group improvisation – much like Coleman’s disc. And while this wasn’t a commodity at the time, some other group leaders still preferred have a more defined arena from which to musically explore their ‘free’ ideas.

Volume one from Sun Ra relies more heavily on bizarre percussion than most other discs from the period. It isn’t necessarily the bells that so many other players in the niche genre bound themselves with, but the timpani. Played either by Sun Ra himself or his tenor man, John Gilmore, the bassey and more over echoey sound that flies from the concert instrument adds an element of other worldly sound to the proceedings. In another way, though, the inclusion of the instrument works to perhaps class up the affair. At the time that these sessions were recorded, this kind of music was, obviously, not going to get a lot of mainstream attention. But the inclusion the timpani may have worked to lure in a few folks that might otherwise have dismissed the date.

Either way, these sessions have been re-released countless times – and quality does vary. But the 2005 re-issue from ESP, which includes all three volumes, is probably your best bet.