I borrowed this record from a school friend, probably interested by guitarist Tommy Bolin, and it's been a firm favourite ever since. I owned it on record, and when i moved into CDs it was one I soon picked up.
Opening with a frenzied Bolin guitar solo on Quadrant 4, and some frantic drumming from Cobham, the cobwebs are will and truly blown away by Searching For The Right Door, a mercifully short drum solo, leading us into Spectrum, a much smoother and more orthodox jazz-rock number, led by Jimmy Owens' flugelhorn and Joe Farrell's sax, ably assisted by Jan Hammer's keyboards, creating a lovely piece. Once again, there's a shot drum solo, Anxiety, leading into the lively, but unremarkable Taurean Matador. Stratus starts off with two minutes of drum solo, before a funky theme, heavy on guitar solo. To The Women In My Life is a short piano intro to Le Lis, laid back and calm, while the album ends with some electronic bonkers on Snoopy's Search, before my favourite track, Red Baron, Hammer and Bolin combining wonderfully to make a gorgeous jazz sound, with Lee Sklar's superb bassline holding everything together.
Drummers' solo albums can be a problem. There's a tendency to slip drum solos into songs that don't suit, or generally to overdrum. Cobham's discrete solos punctuate without interrupting, and he keeps them short.
4* - a great album, which I'll keep returning to.
Comments