New York, NY (Top40 Charts) King Khan has shared the video for "Wait Till The Stars Burn," a highlight from his first-ever jazz album The Infinite Ones (out now via Khannibalism / Ernest Jenning Record Co.). The album features contributions from Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott (Sun Ra Arkestra) and John Convertino and
Martin Wenk (Calexico), among many others.
Made as a tribute to Katherine Dunham, "matriarch and queen mother of black dance", the video features Brontez Purnell, who learned at her school of dance, whose alumni also included Eartha Kitt... The song feature's Marshall Allen & Knoel Scott of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Ben Ra from the Shrines,
Davide Zolli from the mojomatics, as well as John Convertino, from
Calexico on drums. King Khan wrote this piece as a "celestial ode to Sun Ra" and specifically requested Brontez to do a tribute to the great Katherine Dunham in the video. Call it an incantation or voodoo blessing if you want, but this intergalactic meeting of the minds happened during the pandemic, uniting souls and sounds from Berlin, Tucson, Oakland, Koln, Venice and back to the Sun Ra House in Philly. Celebrate the music of the spheres and enjoy the flight!
Sometimes a work of art comes unintentionally from a place from deep within the soul. It meanders and flops onto a table and sits and waits for its birth. The album begins with "Wait Till The Stars Burn", a planetary ode to the Sun. The second track, "Tribute to the Pharoahs Den", is a requiem for
Danny Ray Thompson (R.I.P.) of the Sun Ra Arkestra, his music and legacy now floating above us in the infinity of space. Both tracks and featuring Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott (of the Sun Ra Arkestra). The album ends with a requiem for Hal Willner (R.I.P.) whose devotion to celebrating the weird and insane was like an insatiable thirst leading to deep introspection and joy in harmony and sonic dissidence.
These compositions have all come from this place inside my bipolar, seroquil ridden mind. It is as much a tribute to the great composers who have inspired me; Alice Coltrane, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Philip Kelan Cohran, Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, Miles Davis, Sun Ra, John Carpenter,
Quincy Jones, Old Bollywood, Film Noir, to name just a few. In my 23 years of being a composer of music I have had the great opportunity to score several films all of which never got any commercial fame. These films were made from the blood and sweat of film directors and their crews who tirelessly made incredible documents that were ultimately ignored by humanity. But that never stopped them nor will it stop me. These tracks are from the infinite celluloid that runs deep in my mind, body and soul. In my lifetime i never thought i would see the deaths of "Celluloid" or "analog recording". I refuse to accept the coroner reports on said fatalities, so here is my offering to the canon of cinematic overtures and analog self-preservation, for the films in our heads yet to be made.
