AIDS-awareness nonprofit Red Hot has announced a new tribute album honoring Sun Ra. Nuclear War, due out May 26, is the first volume in a new Red Hot & Ra series. Listen to the lead single, “Nuke’s Blues” by Georgia Anne Muldrow featuring Josef Leimberg, below.

On the new tribute album, Muldrow, Irreversible Entanglements, Angel Bat Dawid, and Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O reintrepret music from Sun Ra’s own 1980s composition “Nuclear War,” which the jazz luminary made in response to the meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant near Philadelphia.

Sun Ra died in 1993 following a series of health issues including strokes, heart failure, and respiratory failure. Since his death, the Sun Ra Arkestra have continued under the leadership of various members, the most recent of which is veteran Sun Ra alto saxophonist Marshall Allen. Their latest album under Allen’s gaze, Living Sky, came out in 2022.

Last year, the three-story building known as Sun Ra House, which the band’s evolving lineup called home since the 1960s, was officially listed as a historic landmark in the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.

from https://pitchfork.com