Anthony Davis with his missing piece, Return from Space, 1985

Some very very beautiful artwork, and amazingly varied to boot, in his oeuvre.   You have two mosaic-like images, an abstract expressionist monochrome, the gorgeous sky-perspective photo of lying humans (Buddhist monks?) from his masterpiece Episteme 2, a surreal or fantasy cliff painting, a watercolour abstract, and then the second from bottom, a mix of cubism and more modern realist expressionism.  Really lovely stuff.  Note that after the mid-80s (link for discography below), in keeping with the zeitgeist, the gorgeous cover art disappears, and pretty quickly too.  Maybe coincidentally with the start of the CD era.

These are all the albums he made from the first Past Lives in 1978 to this rip, 1985's Return From Space, missing sadly so far from the digitalese cybersphere.  Until today that is.

From discogs:

Anthony Davis (born February 20, 1951 in Paterson, New Jersey) is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.  Davis composed an opera entitled X (about Malcolm X), taught at Yale University, and has played with Anthony Braxton and Leo Smith. In 1981, he formed an octet called Episteme. He also wrote the incidental music for the Broadway version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. He incorporates several styles including jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, gospel, non-Western, African, European classical, Indonesian, and experimental music.  Davis is with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and has received acclaim as a free-jazz pianist, a co-leader or sideman with various ensembles. Such ensembles include those which featured Smith as bandleader from 1974 to 1977.  Davis is professor of music at the University of California San Diego. His opera, Wakonda's Dream, is a tale of a contemporary Native American family and the history that affects them.  His latest opera, "Lilith" (libretto by Allan Havis) will have its world premiere at the Conrad Prebys Music Center in UCSD on December 4, 2009. The story is about Adam's first wife and will be set in a modern era.

From the blurb:

From The Original Soundtrack Recordings and The Original Compositions for Return From Space (Wonder Nonfiction)
Towa Production and Fuji Television Network Inc. Presents A Filmlink International Picture in association with Theodore Thomas Productions
Special Thanks To: NASA
℗ & © Gramavision Records

I don't see a lot of google for the show, whatever it was, possibly because it was Japanese, and made for TV (?).  Doesn't matter.  The lovely third track, Into The Outer Space [sic], sounds a lot like the best of ECM's Art Lande (E.g. Rubisa Patrol).  Flautist is Marty Ehrlich.





The often-mentioned Sea of Tranquillity is oddly hyperactive on this record, usually being represented by a droney one-chord synth a la early TD, and the composition with the sea of jostling horns reminds me a lot of my old favourite Berklee alumnus Paul Nash:





Everything was written by Anthony Davis, of course.  Some lovely arrangements here and there recalling his masterpiece Episteme.

I should of course dispense with the usual political comments about how the last landing on the moon was just under 50 years ago, how no one could ever have imagined that it would already be the end of non-earth exploration for humans, how this provides a very simple example to resolve (in an Occam's razor sense) 'Fermi's Paradox,' and how I don't expect any travel beyond the earth in the near or distant future with conditions as they are especially after the big Nov. election in the US and the looming world-changing tragedy of climate change that will soon irrevocably change all our lives for the remainder of humanity's time on the planet, may it at least be long. 
Really have to leave all that stuff out...
As James Vincent said, We're Space Travellers, on our way home...
Let us at least make our home last.