" data-original-title="" title="">Sun Ra is always challenging—perhaps even more so when it is documented on a live recording. A case in point is this offering from the Jazz Detective label, a substantial slice of Ra taken from two concerts at Chicago's Jazz Showcase in the mid-'70s. It can be dense and opaque, even impenetrable at times. But it also swings mightily, with a generous big-band sound which should appeal to all but the most closed-minded jazz listeners. It is a captivating recording and a worthy entry in the already massive catalog of one of jazz's most idiosyncratic figures.

The concerts are presented out of chronological order, with the first recorded in November 1977 and the second in February 1976. Producer Zev Feldman's logic seems to involve capturing something of a full Sun Ra concert experience, with the first set coming from the beginning of the 1977 concert while the second is from the closing portion of the 1976 show. The tentative opening of the first set, "New Beginning," bears out this wisdom, as it is a somewhat shambolic group improvisation which meanders a bit, while the "View From Another Dimension" which follows it starts to find a more focused purpose—albeit with enough of Ra's otherworldly keyboard interjections to keep things unsettled. But, once we get into the remaining tracks, the band truly comes alive, with tenor saxophonist