As must be mentioned whenever approaching the legacy or catalog of Sun Ra, dude was kinda off. But in that, he was able to find some way in which to express himself differently than any musician at the time and arguably influenced jazz as much as anyone else during his heyday. During that time Sun Ra introduced the electric piano into a genre of music that was constantly struggling with what was hip, new, traditional and better than before. The pull of traditionalists probably served to egg on some of the freaks (that's meant in a flattering tone, honestly) from this period. But as more folks worked to push around the lines that separated noise from music from emotion, the concepts bolstering these pieces was spread to new players and infected another generation. Subsequent to Sun Ra, a slew of players found as much pleasure in rollicking noise as blues progressions.

When Featuring Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold was recorded, John Coltrane still had a few years left before parting with life and Sanders was still frequently in his company when not beginning his career as a date leader. That's an important time frame to set up, though. While Trane is generally a marker of the avant garde in jazz , he's infrequently mentioned in the same breath as Sun Ra. In some manner of thought, that's understandable. However, if there were to be some comparison between the two players more aggressive solos, there'd be at least a passing similarity found. Granted, Trane most likely grasped music in a more scholarly way than Sun Ra, but to jazzbos, each player needs to be looked up to similarly. Sun Ra didn't change the way others play keys, but he certainly opened up the instrument in a way no American player had.

This date from '64, though, was recently re-released by ESP Disk some twenty years after its initial pressing. It's curious that the recording sat around for over a decade before being released in the first place, though. Sanders, at the time, was well enough known as a side man to have generated some additional press on top of the maligned keyboardist. Beyond that, though, the performances on this disc are bit beyond what others were releasing at the time. Of course Free Jazz had already been released, but in '64 Coltrane was still recording a few blues tracks on his albums. And there certainly isn't a blues on the Sun Ra disc.

"Gods on Safari," even if the rest of the album is given to group improvs, sports a rather atonal move on Sanders' part. In light of his work with both John and Alice Coltrane over the next few years and his solo discs at the end of the decade, it seems as if the sax player had already determined his style and was just waiting to unleash it. That solo, while perhaps the most abrasive, was contrasted by some of Black Harold's flute work out on the partially laid back "The Voice of Pain." Even that effort, though, could make this offering palatable to an early '60s audience.