Two decades have passed since Sons of Ra emerged onto Chicago’s scene with their fusion of heavy prog, jazz, math rock, and elements of avant garde music. Initially a line-blurring experiment, the trio’s most recent work has proven the band’s sound to jazz fusion aficionados, math and progressive rock purists alike while holding their own on bills on the Midwestern heavy music scenes.
Formed by guitarist Erik Oldman Vecchione (Mare Crisium, Afrofuturistics), drummer Mike Rataj (Arbogast, Mine Collapse), and saxophonist & bassist Keith Wakefield (Jan King And Medicine Ball, Afrofuturistics), Sons of Ra independently released four EPs since 2016, culminating with the internationally critically acclaimed six-part suite “Tropic of Cancer” in 2024.
Having drawn deeply from individual passions and stories, Sons of Ra’s evolution continues with their full-length debut album, “Standard Deviation”, diving deeper into their roots of avant-garde jazz, fusion, math and progressive rock, while maintaining a powerful metallic crunch. The album features interpretations of compositions from jazz legends Carla Bley, John Coltrane, and Don Ellis, balanced with a collection of original compositions reflecting the group’s diverse influences.
“Standard Deviation” was recorded and mixed by Spenser Morris (Saor, Panopticon, Vukari) at Palisade Studios in Chicago and mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Alan Douches at West West Side Sound in New York. Additionally, the album features guest performances by bassist Stephen Reichelt (Morgue Supplier, Drug Honkey, Mare Crisium), percussionist Paul Abella, and flautist Isaiah Sanderman. The cover art is a painting commissioned by the band from Chicago-area artist Nick Gurley, layout was handled by Erik Oldman Vecchione with photography from Sam Castellano at Doozy and Vacant Era Photography.
The opening track, “Disintegration (Alabama Revisited)”, serves as the lead single for the record, arriving through an official video produced by Doozy. Watch the video below.
The band comments: “The lead-off track is inspired from a composition by saxophonist John Coltrane called ‘Alabama’. It’s a piece that he wrote in response to a 1963 church bombing by the KKK in Birmingham, Alabama. Four little girls were killed. Erik wrote the main body ‘Disintegration’ during what was happening with Ahmaud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. It’s a thread that is part of our band’s story and a reflection of our identity. We open and close with Coltrane’s melody to tie the threads of the piece to what still goes on today in the United States.
For the overall concept of the album, we started to experiment with these different facets of performance and arrangement paradigms live while working through some jazz standards and compositions. We grappled with being a heavy band at our core. Erik didn’t want to just keep writing more of the same troupe of prog-metal riffs from our first and second EPs. Mike was interested in exploring other genres and infusing different elements while maintaining intensity and heaviness. Keith was rediscovering the tenor saxophone while we were looking at a way to be able to perform with more than three instrumental roles live, bringing in live looping and synthesizers. A lot of rhythmic expressions from math rock, funk, free and avant garde jazz, made their way into our sound and influenced the selection of standards and compositions we decided to record for the album. The original pieces stemmed from the desire to explore other genres. Some of the compositions were brought fully formed to the group, while others went through a newer, more collaborative, rhythm-driven writing process to bring out the different stylistic flavors”.
“Standard Deviation” will be released on April 11th, 2025, on digital, CD, and LP through the Lasers Edge Group’s instrumental branch, Free Electric Sound. Preorders are live at the label webshop here and Bandcamp – the standard version here and the hi-res version here.
Tracklist:
1. Disintegration (Alabama Revisited)
2. Outside Looking In
3. Don’t Know Yet
4. Intrepidation
5. Vashkar
6. Upstart
7. Porous Silver
8. Nature Boy
9. Lividity and The Ascension
A band constantly on the go, Sons of Ra is booking live events and tour dates surrounding the release of “Standard Deviation”, with a hometown release show confirmed for April 12th and more. Expect a flurry of live updates to post over the weeks ahead alongside additional videos/singles from the LP.
Live Shows 2025:
4/12/2025 Reggies – Chicago, IL *
4/25/2025 North End Pub – Lafayette, IN
* (release show w/ Wave Cage, Puke In The Icetray)
Web:
linktr.ee/sonsofra
