Nidhamu

by Sean Westergaard

Nidhamu is more music from the Egyptian tour of 1971, with the bulk of the material coming from a show at the Ballon Theater in Cairo. "Space Loneliness, No. 2" starts with a tone poem, then goes into a long keyboard solo which leads into the "Space Loneliness" theme, originally recorded in the late '50s for the album We Travel the Spaceways. "Discipline No. 11" has a mysterious intro, then a mini-Moog feature which answers the unasked question, "What if Sun Ra played the outro to "Lucky Man" instead of Keith Emerson?" "Discipline No. 15" is a mini tone poem while the title cut has Ra as the mad tone scientist on a crazy organ/Moog feature. Nidhamu is a fine document, but not essential by any means.