Release : The Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Inner Mounting Flame (1971)
Artist : The Mahavishnu Orchestra
Album : The Inner Mounting Flame (1971)
Genre : Progressive Rock
Source : CDDA
Label : MFSL
URL :
Date : 00-00-1999
Encoder : LAME 3.97 / -V2 --vbr-new
Quality : 196kbps 44100 kHz Joint Stereo
Tracks : 8
Time : 46:23 min
Size : 65.28 MB
1 Meeting Of The Spirits 6:51
2 Dawn 5:15
3 Noonward Race 6:29
4 A Lotus On Irish Streams 5:40
5 Vital Transformation 6:16
6 The Dance Of Maya 7:17
7 You Know, You Know 5:07
8 Awakening 3:28
This is the album that made John McLaughlin a semi-household name, a furious,
high-energy, yet rigorously conceived meeting of virtuosos that, for all intents
and purposes, defined the fusion of jazz and rock a year after Miles Davis'
Bitches Brew breakthrough. It also inadvertently led to the derogatory
connotation of the word fusion, for it paved the way for an army of imitators,
many of whose excesses and commercial panderings devalued the entire movement.
Though much was made of the influence of jazz-influenced improvisation in the
Mahavishnu band, it is the rock element that predominates, stemming directly
from the electronic innovations of Jimi Hendrix. The improvisations,
particularly McLaughlin's post-Hendrix machine-gun assaults on double-necked
electric guitar and Jerry Goodman's flights on electric violin, owe more to the
freakouts that had been circulating in progressive rock circles than to jazz,
based as they often are on ostinatos on one chord. These still sound genuinely
thrilling today on CD, as McLaughlin and Goodman battle Jan Hammer's keyboards,
Rick Laird's bass, and especially Billy Cobham's hard-charging drums, whose
jazz-trained technique pushed the envelope for all rock drummers. What doesn't
date so well are the composed medium- and high-velocity unison passages that are
played in such tight lockstep that they can't breathe. There is also time out
for quieter, reflective numbers that are drenched in studied spirituality ("A
Lotus on Irish Streams") or irony ("You Know You Know"); McLaughlin was to do
better in that department with less-driven colleagues elsewhere in his career.
Aimed with absolute precision at young rock fans, this record was wildly popular
in its day, and it may have been the cause of more blown-out home amplifiers
than any other record this side of Deep Purple.