HYMN OF THE SEVENTH GALAXY

Chick Corea adds electric guitar and cranks the speed and volume to 11. This album changed my life. This is enough to make any accomplished musician throw in the towel. I read a Bill Connors interview of how much he practiced his ass off for this, and I believe it. In 1973 Bill Connors was a new sound, and his intense solos are on fire. It must have been quite a journey from the Spiral Staircase. Sheesh! I don't mean to talk only of Bill Connors, all musicians here, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, and Chick Corea pull off mind boggling, blistering performances. Funky, fusion, jazz, the works! It's puzzling of why Connors' stint with the band was so short lived, in my opinion it had more soul and sophistication than the Dimeola era. Though I also like Dimeola, he's a very horizontal player, and I wonder if he could have pulled off these dual vertical lines with Chick the way Connors did. The mostly Dorian scales of the later "Where have I know you before" or "Romantic Warrior" were not as diatonically complex as what was going on with "Hymn of the 7th Galaxy". "Hymn" is a deep excursion into the cosmos, many listenings are required. Recording quality is a little thin, but that may be with the times. I wish they'd dust off those old masters and re-release a nice new clean version on CD. Stanely Clarke's "After The Cosmic Rain" alone, is worth the price of admission; the high crescendos of this tune swirl higher than Everest. I cannot fault this masterpiece.