“The music is different here.  The vibrations are different, not like planet Earth”.

This little snippet has had me flummoxed for years. I’ve heard the distinctive stoned-out, deep-South drawl uttering these words on countless music tracks as a sample and although I had a rough idea who it was that said it, i didn’t know from where it originally came. Then recently I saw the utterly mental  ‘Space is the Place’ at a friend’s film night in their basement. It all fell into place. Or should I say it all fell out place.

‘Space is the Place‘ is bonkers. People will try to tell you about the film’s meaning and reassure you that there are undoubtedly some clever things happening in the film’s incongruous plot, but I have to say that what I saw was drilled right through my head and came out the other side leaving a thick and creamy trail of cosmic vapour in there. I mean that with a sincere dollop of respect and admiration – the film itself is fairly badly acted but the mind-blowing visual elements and awesome musical performances from Sun Ra himself and his Arkestra make it all happen.

I thought I might talk about the plot, but when I started to write it down it looked insane. It may be worth trying to work it all for yourself, but there is some old-fashioned ‘good versus evil’ in here with Sun-Ra transgressing the cosmos to use music as his medium of transportation so that he can outwit an evil pimp overlord called the Overseer – a personifcation of evil in the black community.

Keep your eyes open for the crazy spaceship and mirror-faced man. They certainly don’t make them like this anymore.