BETWEEN NOTHINGNESS & ETERNITY

After Birds Of Fire the Mahavishnu Orchestra were going through an identity crisis. While McLaughlin was band leader the other members, Billy Cobham, Rick Laird, Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman, felt that they too were putting in an equal input into the band yet it was McLaughlin whose name was featured below the credits of every song. The sessions which would have resulted in the third release by the original band would remain locked away in a CBS vault for the next couple of decades. In 1973 the Mahavishnu Orchestra showcased the new material which this album which only featured the new and unheard material. It was released as an album which also proved the the swan song release from the line up that had created such a powerful and intense collaboration like nothing that had come before. The live album itself suffers from a dated sound but the chemistry within the band is still at a white hot and super fused intensity as the band build and create a multi expressive layer of colours and sounds in that intricate and complex method that the Mahavishnu Orchestra were known for. The interplay between Hammer's keyboard, McLaughlin's guitar and Jerry Goodman's violin is at a tremendous high juxtaposed against the solid and hypnotic dual rhythm of Cobham and Laird, and perhaps the inner conflict was producing even more fireworks that pushed the band to a different level. Drummer Billy Cobham for one complained that he never felt his personality come through in the music at the latter stages of the Mahavishu Orchestra's days but you would hardly believe it, though his Spectrum album released in the same year as From Nothingness To Eternity is a very different entity with a varying facet of funky grooves. From Nothingness To Eternity is the recording of a band that never peaked as they exploded prematurely, but that must have been seen on the horizon. The ego's involved with such talent would have to make their presence known some time, that much is inevitable. The material from this album which was only recently released as the Lost Trident Sessions is a band going through a new stage and a new exploration of fusion. The Mahavsihnu Orchestra were the living essence of the fusion era and all that was good and bad, reaching highs with the music but equal lows with ego causing discord. A rare live album from one of the most explosive units to emerge from jazz/rock scene in the seventies in their all too brief catalogue.