Sun Ra, as well as anyone, proved that an artist could change with the times without being a dedicated follower of fashion. In fact, Ra and his music never stopped evolving. A series of albums recorded from 1978 to 1980—Lanquidity, On Jupiter, Sleeping Beauty, and Strange Celestial Road—demonstrate the influence on Ra of musical and production trends of the mid- and late-1970s, especially heavy, studio-enhanced dance floor grooves (traceable from soul and funk to disco), and atmospheric New Age "dream" pieces. But Ra never fully surrendered to these trends; it's arguable that he even embraced them. He adapted techniques, but what he created amounted more to reinventions than "File Under" genre works.

Rodger Coleman, writing in 2008 at his Sun Ra Sundays blog about the albums On Jupiter and Sleeping Beauty, said: "These two 1979 Saturn sessions present Sun Ra at his most accessible — groovy, dreamy, spacey, and suitably cosmic while reigning in the full-blown freakouts that can make Sun Ra’s music difficult for some .... That is not to say that these are lesser albums. Quite the contrary! This is simply beautiful music! Essential!"