John McLaughlin - Industrial Zen (CD)

All Music Guide

Everperipatetic, everrestless John McLaughlin returns again to the electric jazz field that he once commanded in the early 1970s, while never quite landing on the same spot where he left off. A few of the familiar components are still whirring away the dizzyingly fast, jagged, unison themes; the furious interplay with his teammates, whose personnel change on every track. But the landscape has changed again; John immerses himself deeply into the hightech digital scenery, programming loops and backdrops (the closing mood piece of "New Blues Old Bruise" is merely a sleeker impression of what Pink Floyd was doing more than three decades before). Those voices you hear on a few tracks are of course, not real; they're sampled chorus effects as played through a controller of some sort (which anyone can do at home on their Yamaha keyboards these days). Memories of Shakti McLaughlin's sporadicallyrecurring Indian experiment are hinted at but not recalled in toto as tabla master Zakir Hussain ...is called for repeatedly, working himself into a frenzy on the 12 1/2 minute tone poem, "Dear Dalai Lama." Saxophonist Bill Evans arrives from the 1980s version of Mahavishnu; he knows his way around the McLaughlin mazes of notes as well as anyone, and on the closing passage of "Just So Only More So," he and John carry on a touching, conversational dialogue on their instruments. Hadrien Feraud pays effusive, voluble tribute to Jaco Pastorius, not only on the obvious title "For Jaco," but also on "Senor C.S." While "Industrial Zen" is a reminder to all that McLaughlin remains a formidable electric player in his 60s, the only track that really sticks in the memory is the last, "Mother Nature," with its electronic revolving ostinato and Shankar Mahadevan's keening vocal. Industrial Zen, indeed. - Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide Read more Less