One of my favourite jazz albums, yet to be reviewed is Miles Davis' In A Silent Way. A young guitarist from Doncaster, John McLaughlin made his debut with the Davis group on this most lovely album, and I'd long been meaning to check out his own work, when I saw in HMV, for the price of a couple of pints, an Original Album Classics set of the five Mahavishnu Orchestra albums from 1971 to 1975.
There's quite a stellar line up in the band, with Billy Cobham on drums and Jan Hammer on piano joining McLaughlin, as well as Rick Laird on bass and Jerry Goodman on violin, so the opening minutes of the album in Meeting Of The Spirits comes as no surprise, a frenzied jazz-rock episode, with plenty of guitar heroics. Dawn is a slower piece, again showcasing McLaughlin's guitar, with a repeated rising theme, which gets more likeable with every listen. It's back to jazz-rock frenzy on The Noonward Race, with the violin stepping up, before the slower, more acoustic A Lotus On Irish Streams.
Vital Transformation is standard jazz-rock, nothing elaborate or exciting, while The Dance Of Maya takes a repeated theme and does it to death with a whiny violin, until halfway through, a much more rock feel emerges. You Know You Know seems to repeat earlier themes, gently and quite effectively, before a full blown thrash, giving everyone a quick solo on Awakening.
It's an interesting slice of early 1970s jazz-rock, perhaps a bit self indulgent and over the top at times, but certainly worth a listen.
3* - a decent enough debut album from an all-star jazz-rock combo
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