{"id":14,"date":"2020-01-23T00:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T00:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/\/?p=14"},"modified":"2020-02-20T17:27:14","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T23:27:14","slug":"captain-supernovas-the-voyage-never-ends-album-reviewed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/captain-supernovas-the-voyage-never-ends-album-reviewed\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Captain Supernova\u2019s \u2018The Voyage Never Ends\u2026\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In his early writings, philosopher S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard utilized various pseudonyms to present distinctive viewpoints and to interact with each other in complex dialogues. Throughout its history, jazz musicians have also adopted similar approaches \u2013 particularly relying on cosmic iconography \u2013 to better push their personal creative boundaries. One recent example is the three members of The Comet is Coming calling themselves \u201cKing Shabaka\u201d, \u201cDanalogue\u201d, and \u201cBetamax\u201d. Perhaps the best-known case, however, is Herman Blount using the moniker Sun Ra. Keyboardist, producer, and composer Eric Borders likewise creates a cosmic persona for himself using the moniker Captain Supernova (often shortened to C.SN) to explore music he otherwise wouldn\u2019t be able to release under his own name. Such sounds are perhaps best seen on last October\u2019s The Voyage Never Ends\u2026<\/em>, an album which very much flew under the radar and is now being released as a separate instrumental version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As both Ra and Borders adopted alien-sounding names and backstories and play the same instrument, it may be tempting to view the more recent as a tribute of sorts to the elder. However, there are more differences between them than similarities. The former claimed to be a foreigner visiting our planet from Saturn but the latter\u2019s character is one of us going outward \u2013 an astronaut traveling through space and sending his message back to earth. This difference also drastically shapes their variance in musical influences. While Ra presented sounds never before heard, C.SN\u2019s creativity comes less from the unheard and more from his role as a metaphorical turntablist \u2013 dicing and mixing sci-fi scores and sound effects, jazz-fusion, progressive rock, soul, funk, 70\u2019s R&B, and, arguably, 90\u2019s nu-jazz into a new entr\u00e9e. The Voyage Never Ends\u2026<\/em> appears eerily familiar due to its readily identifiable components \u2013 at times sounding like Yussef Kamaal\u2019s Black Focus<\/em> (\u201cBreathing\u201d) and others like Terrace Martin\u2019s Velvet Portraits<\/em> (\u201cReveal Within\u201d) \u2013 but also oddly unfamiliar as those sounds are mixed in ways not before examined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n