INFINITY MACHINE

Not as good as "Looking Thru" but still a worthy item for your fusion collection. The songs are more funkier here than on "Looking Thru" (notably on "Ju-Ju-Man") but still jazzy and cool. Ok, a couple of weaker songs here but the rest is great. Too bad that Passport is a rather unknown band than it's fusion colleagues (Brand X, Weather Report, Gong etc.) cause they are a great band with highly skilled musicians.

Recommended. 3 stars.

PASSPORT was at the height of their popularity in 1976, playing a blend of cosmopolitan fusion that owed little to the traditional Jazz-Rock style pioneered by MILES DAVIS or JOHN McLAUGHLIN. The music leaned more in an easy listening Prog-Jazz direction, with a silver lining of Space Rock and a healthy dose of boilerplate mid '70s Funk. It sounds like an awkward combination, but with this quartet of talent, led by the indefatigable saxophonist Klaus Doldinger, their music has stood the test of time surprisingly well.

The funkiness is front and center on the signature track here, the album opener "Ju-Ju-Man": one of those definitive 1970s dance hits, and likely familiar to even the most casual listener (although I doubt very many people recognized it at the time as coming from a German band). The brass fanfares, mock disco beat, and that crunchy clavinet sound, along with lively virtuoso solos on sax and synth, are almost guaranteed to make you twitch your sequined butt and tap your platform shoes.

But the song is something of a novelty, and doesn't really give a full account of the band's true range. Listen to the nervous, optimistic energy of "Morning Sun", or the romantic delicacy of "Blue Aurora", an all-too brief idyll before the unexpected electronic double-whammy of the two standout selections on the album: the title track and the aptly titled "Ostinato". The former is a balls-to-the-walls space jazz blowout with energy to spare; the latter is a lush, galloping synthesizer and sequencer-driven jam, ending in a spacey coda highlighting the world-class drumming of Curt Cress, who ranks up there with Bill Bruford at the top of the percussion pyramid.

The album ends with "Contemplation", an almost symphonic sounding chill-out with a name that speaks for itself.

Klaus Doldinger would continue to record as PASSPORT for decades to come, with a revolving door roster of backup musicians and in a variety of jazz-rock styles (including a vocalist at one point in the late '70s). But this album represented the end of a particularly fertile era for the band, marked by the last appearance of that striking Wandrey's Studio cover art. It's a strong album, still worth a listen after all these years; just don't judge them by "Ju-Ju-Man" alone.

One year after the defining Cross-Collateral album, Passport lost their momentum again. Even with the same line-up, the dedicated songwriting of the predecessor is not repeated. Instead we get a couple of nice tracks mixed with forgettable light-fusion.

With Juju Man, Passport are back where they were two albums ago, creating pleasant but forgettable easy-listening fusion fit for air-play in bars and clubs. it's a funky Carribean tune that wouldn't be out of place on a 70s Bacardi rum commercial. Mourning Sun offers more wallpaper music for sound-tracks, but Blue Aura is a bit different, an attempt to re-create the moody Weather Report ambience of old. Not bad but rather déjà entendu.

The title track is closer to what we want to hear. The splendid bass guitar dominates this heavily syncopated funk track. Doldinger's sax and Wolfgang Schmid's organ spin some improvisations around the intense rhythms. Ostinato returns to a more laid-back dub rhythms, with a catchy main bass loop and a mellow spacey arrangement that builds up nicely towards the end. Did I already mention Ozric Tentacles in this review? Contemplation is a cliché soft-jazz tune for 70s porn-flicks.

With Infinity Machine Passport gets very close to falling apart entirely, but there's still some traces of their potential. The final collapse would follow on the next and following albums, which all rate about 1 stars at best.

The last of Klaus' great quartet as keyboard master Kristian Schulze would depart after this album (Wolfgang Schmid and Curt Cress hanging on for one more album).

1. "Ju-Ju-man" (10:04) funk with a bit of a Disco beat and a flashy flair to its "horn" accents. There is a bit too much swag and cock as will become so popular in the machismo Black exploitation films of the time. I hate to say it, but this song is a perfect example of the fact that the funk went to far: the experimental exploration of all of the new synthesizer sounds that artists started throwing almost indiscriminately into the funk music of the 1970s went, in my opinion, way too far--into the protean realm of the ludicrous and absurd--where the effect was to reflect back upon the artist and humanity in terms of freakish exaggeration and circus-like parody. One of the artists that took this behaviour to the extreme, Parliament, at least gave you an immersive circus-like show which they pretended to take serious and which you could walk away from. Anyway, in case you can't tell, the musical palette on this song send me over the top; just too much. (Maybe I need to listen to more George Carlin or read more Robert Heinlein books so that I can desensitize myself to the idiotities of my own species.) (17/20)

2. "Morning sun" (5:49) more into the realm of upbeat Weather Report and Jay Bekcenstein SPYRO GYRA. At least it's coming more from jazz roots than novelty funk/R&B. (8.75/10)

3. "Blue aura" (3:02) pensive whole-band chords open this with some nice delicacy and spaciousness--wordless vocals in there, as well! Soprano sax with gentle yet reactive and creative piano accompaniment takes over at the one minute mark, making a pretty nice little piece just the two of them. Definitely top three song for me. (9.3333/10)

4. "Infinity machine" (5:12) despite the weird, stop-and-restart space intro, this turns into a very nice uptempo song with power and drive. Nothing offensive, over the top, or immature here. Curt Cress is dialed in and Wolfgang, Kristian and Klaus are right on the same page together. A great display of full-band coordination and integration. Plus, pretty decent solos from both Klaus and Kristian in the fourth and fifth minutes (with some fun accents from Klaus on Moog beneath Kristian's solo). (9/10)

5. "Ostinato" (7:37) with the hypnotic groove coming from the bass line it feels a bit like Alan Parsons Project I Robot, but the rest of the rock-heavy Jazz-Rock Fusion over the top is genuine and respectable. There are, however, more than just a couple "modern" synth sounds woven into the tapestry of this one--a couple trying to pull the song into the realm of Smooth Jazz or future Jean-Luc Ponty "Space Jazz." It's nice to hear Wolfgang Schmid return to his beloved guitar for the fifth and sixth minutes, and Curt Cress's tom and roto-tom play in sixth and seventh minutes is pretty darn awesome! (13.375/15)

6. "Contemplation" (6:39) another spacey intro with more wind-chime-like percussions and train-like doppler effect sax and bouncy-echoed Fender Rhodes until 1:40 when some acoustic guitar strums starts a new stream over which Klaus' echo-(chorus?)sax pronounces the melody notes which at times gets David Sanborn-level in terms of power scream(ch)ing but the speed or varies very little. (8.75/10)

Total Time: 38:23

B/four stars; a nice if inconsistent album of forward thinking Jazz-Rock Fusion that many lovers of technological advance will value greatly.