From 2015. After a bubbling build a blitz of furious jazz-rock unleashes itself, the power and improvisational resource of John McLaughlin and his band the 4th Dimension undiminished on this their third studio album together.
That blistering raw atmosphere is a feature of the album. Yet beyond the firepower there is a lot of tenderness too say on ‘Being You Being Me’ and above all the tribute to Paco de Lucía on ‘El Hombre Que Sabia’, not forgetting Étienne M’Bappé’s bass introduction to the beautiful ‘Gaza City’. Ranjit Barot on drums (alternating on the instrument with Gary Husband) provides rugged rhythms and a firm architecture to the sprawling McLaughlin compositions heated up elsewhere by Husband’s keyboard stabs and spatial shifts on a track like ‘360 Flip’.
Recorded partly in London, partly in Monaco, this could well be the 4th Dimension’s most significant statement on record and finds McLaughlin and his talented band in riotous form.
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