Phil Cohran And Legacy

Long-awaited reissue pressed on 180g vinyl
With Obi strip
Debut of new imprint from Stones Throw Records
Music from Kelan Phil Cohran, member of the pioneering afro-futurist Sun Ra Arkestra
Description

Stones Throw Records debuts new imprint Listening Position with the long-awaited reissue of Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy’s spiritual jazz masterpiece African Skies. A holy grail for jazz collectors, African Skies has been out of print since its initial pressing of 1000 vinyl copies in 2010. The thousands who’ve long sought their own copy will welcome this reissue as the definitive version of this profound recording. Used copies fetch over $500+ on the used market, and thousands of users “want” the record on Discogs.com.

Kelan Phil Cohran was a member of the pioneering afro-futurist Sun Ra Arkestra and appears on several of their most acclaimed recordings. He released several albums of his own compositions in the 1960s with his band The Artistic Heritage Ensemble, including a revelatory tribute to Malcom X – a well-known collectible for jazz aficionados. Cohran was a mentor to artists such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Chaka Khan and The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a Chicago-based brass band whose members included 8 of his sons.

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Listening Position is proud to present the official reissue of Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy's African Skies. No expense was spared in producing it at the highest fidelity. We sourced the original studio master DAT from Captcha Records, and had it transferred [bit-perfect with 0 errors] by Dan Johnson.

In the original release, there was a distracting segment of noise in White Nile near the end of the vocal section. It appeared to be noise from an instrument's output jack. Michael Graves meticulously removed this static and White Nile finally plays back uninterrupted.

The files were mastered by Josh Bonati, who then cut the lacquer for the vinyl pressing on a Neumann VMS70 lathe. The original release of African Skies was a "flat transfer", meaning there was no mastering applied to the recording whatsoever. We believe additional sonic details were brought to the surface during the mastering process, while generally preserving the tone of the original release.

Plated by Gary Salstrom, and pressed by Fidelity Record Pressing at 180g, the records are flat, centered and noise-free with a deeply silent background. The final version has been meticulously checked for quality on audiophile sound systems across the world.

We are anticipating questions about the track “Blue Nile,” of which White Nile was apparently an alternate take. There was a track called “Blue Nile” listed last on the DAT, but it was an exact duplicate of White Nile. After analyzing the original release of “Blue Nile”, we believe it may have been sourced from a backup cassette recording. We chose to leave Blue Nile off the tracklist as it does not match the fidelity of the other recordings.

We included a 4-page insert which contains never-before-seen photos from subsequent performances at The Adler Planetarium, as well as archival photos from the Cohran estate.

We replaced the original inner-gatefold image of clouds with an immersive telescopic image of Supernova 1987a. This supernova event was first seen in the southern hemisphere by South American and African observers. It generated a great deal of interest in astronomical discovery, which was likely a source of immense interest for Cohran's work in this field.

We really hope you enjoy this reissue of African Skies.