Originally released as two separate LPs in 1971 on Parisian music enthusiast Chantal Darcy’s Shandar label, this enlarged and definitive 6-LP edition documenting Sun Ra and his Arkestra’s monumental two-day concert at the Fondation Maeght festival on the 3 and 5 August, 1970 (with curatorial assistance from French music critic Daniel Caux and financial support from art collector and dealer Aimé Maeght) is nothing short of a revelation.

While the initial release was an edited version, made up from a selection of 12 recordings from the two sets, here both concerts can be heard in all their resplendent glory. Performed and recorded in an inflatable experimental theatre (a venue ideally suited to the group’s futuristic sound and imagery), replete with dancers, light projections and intervals of audience participation, Ra’s Fondation Maeght concerts brought together the full experience of his music, poetry and philosophy and beamed it out to a mostly European audience that was both receptive to his message and in awe of what was unfolding before them. As way of introduction Sun Ra gently glides the sound of his Galactic Research Arkestra in with a softly fingered organ recitation of ‘Love In Outer Space’ as the group’s percussion section gathers pace and the horn section closes in for an excerpt from ‘The Shadow World’ – with John Gilmore’s lava-hot saxophone eruptions to the fore.

The improvisation gloves really come off, however, when Ra steps up to his newly acquired Mini-Moog synthesizer and lets loose ‘The Cosmic Explorer’, an elongated storm of raw electronic keyboard power that gradually subsides into the calm of a meditative piano solo.

Another key highlight is vocalist June Tyson’s emphatic readings of ‘Blackmyth’ and ’The Shadows Took Shape’, two mysterious Sun Ra texts that he further illuminates with a ferocious splintering Rocksichord solo that is mind-blowing to say the least. As is Marshall Allen’s ecstatic oboe playing on ‘Sky’, where he is joined by a volley of trumpets and tympani as the concert reaches its joyous conclusion.

Over the 12 vinyl sides that make up this remarkable document are contained superb examples of musical craftsmanship and wondrous artistic imagination. That it has finally been made available is a cause for celebration. ‘Three Cheers For Ra’ indeed!