BETWEEN NOTHINGNESS & ETERNITY

Mahavishnu Orchestra

Jazz Rock/Fusion

3.79 | 207 ratings

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OGTL

This was my first introduction to Mahavishnu Orchestra and the genre of Jazz/Rock Fusion. It striked me as being very technical and vituosic, with decent writing.

To me, all three tracks are very similar so it won't be necessary to differentiate between them.

First off, strong points: The electric violin on this album was a big plus for me, after hearing "Plain Truth" from Gentle Giant I crave all offerings of this instrument. It's got such a great sound. It's used on this album very "fiddly". What I mean is, there isn't much symphonic type soaring notes, but more of a disjointed, faster playing style. Another good aspect is the guitar playing of John McLaughlin. He's an amazing virtuso, and fails to dissapoint live. Everything is so technically flawless, very fast and intricate playing. This leads to a different side of the spectrum..

Weaker points: The guitar playing of Mclaughlin is so very fast and prescise, he loses emotion and feeling behind his playing. I will not speak of his work outside this album, but I'll judge the playing on this particular work to be very fast and technical, but without emotion and feeling. The keyboard playing is largely annoying, that one specific type of sound that is also used extensively on Return t Forever's "Romantic Warrior" gets on my nerves. Its so obnoxious, transparent and fake. That is largely a figure of opinion though, I'm certain others will like it.

The compositional structure is typical of Jazz/Rock Fusion, with alot of improvisation, and when that gets drawn out, a member contributes a pretentious riff that the whole band plays together symphonically before trailing off into individual solos again.

It might seem like I'm being a little harsh, but I actually enjoy this album a good amount. It's music for the brain, and not for the soul.

OGTL | 3/5 | 2006-12-27

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