The fusion artist Dave Matthews and his 1977 Dune

An interesting story relating to his Dune work, from discogs:

Douglas Payne , who runs an extensive website about all the CTI and KUDU releases, and wrote cover notes for many of the anniversary release/re-masters explains exactly why the album "Dune" was actually deleted from the CTI catalogue in 1977. Payne's website includes an article, by Arnaldo DeSouteiro, Brazil’s leading jazz producer and CTI historian, in where he says:

"David Matthews did a second and last album as a leader for CTI, Dune, an artistically successful project who turned out to be a commercial fiasco thanks to the imprudence of CTI’s legal management. Since CTI had not secured writer Frank Herbert’s authorization to use his novel Dune as the thematic center piece for the album, Herbert filed a law suit against CTI and won, forcing the label to delete it from catalog. For this reason, that magnificent album was never reissued in the USA, although a CD reissue came out in Japan by King Records in 1994."

More details can be found here and here.

On this blog Dune appeared earlier here in relation to the group which named itself after the scifi book.

The first part, called Arakis:

You can see from that opener that the orchestral fusion here, although quite well composed and with all the right moves and energy, is not quite as compelling as some earlier stuff we've heard, esp. my usual point of reference, Arif Mardin's Journey, or the other brilliant work, Teo Macero's OST Virus.  (Of course as usual I expect some readers / listeners to vehemently disagree, which is OK.)

Song of the Bene Gesserit:

My son did a project on Dune recently and for the first time in my life I took a look at those books. I have to say the imagination is great but the basic plot bedrock of rebel hero who has to take over an empire from an evil ruler is trite like hell. I can't believe such a basic plot would have been so popular. Later books got really weird which I found a little bit more enticing.

In this package I included not just Dune itself but some later albums which were def more fuzacky, can't possibly recommend those (Digital Love, Cosmic City. Super Funky Fax, Grand Cross).