Modern Harmonic is the newest star in the Sundazed solar system. Randy Fox sets the controls for the heart of this cosmic Nashville label…
Bob Irwin and Jay Millar are sitting in the Nashville office of Sundazed Music, in the historic RCA Studio A office building on Music Row. They’re discussing the company’s newest imprint, Modern Harmonic, and the label’s flagship releases by the late jazz composer, bandleader and self-proclaimed interplanetary traveller, Sun Ra.
“A lot of Sun Ra’s original albums feature studio cuts and live material drawn from several different years,” A&R/label manager Millar says. “He often assembled albums based on how tracks fit together, rather than when they were recorded. That’s what we did on our release Thunder Of The Gods.
“Working closely with the Sun Ra estate, we found unreleased material from the Universe Is Blue album and from Strange Strings. If you look at those tracks as part of the album they were recorded for, they don’t seem to work, but brought together and packaged with great artwork, it’s like they were meant to be. It’s technically a compilation, but it’s really a new Sun Ra album.”