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Atavistic hasn't put out a lot of Sun Ra. Most of his stuff was rereleased on Evidence, and there's a few out on ESP Disc and a couple other labels. The ESP material is among his very best.
I've done two radio shows, one where I played 4 hours straight of Sun Ra, and another where I played 6. I've also had the pleasure of seeing him live the year before he died. They had to wheel him on and off the stage, but he still sat a the piano and did the Ra magic, and the Arkestra was fantastic, of course.
I had tickets to see him a year later, but he died right before the show was scheduled.
We played a Sun Ra song in the ceremony when my wife and I were married.
My favorites:
Space is the Place
Atlantis
Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy
Concert for the Comet Kohoutek
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (vols. 1 - 2 issued separately, all awesome)
My Brother the Wind
Crystal Spears
Cymbals (evidence issued this and the above album in a double cd as "The Great Lost Sun Ra Albums")
Nothing Is
Disco 3000
Dancing Shadows
Somewhere Else
Purple Night (one of the better later ones, I think maybe his last studio album)
It's really close to true that practically anything you find is likely to be good. Some of the very earliest stuff is pretty straight jazz by comparison to later work. The only Ra album I've ever had and gotten rid of was Reflections in Blue which is a '70s era very straight jazz album with him playing very digital sounding synths and no space stuff to speak of (I like a lot of his straight jazz, but this one sounds like smooth jazz of the elevator reality).
Sonic Youth are my favorite rock band, but Ra is the musician I consider the ultimate influence on me musically.
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