Music Banter - View Single Post - The Anthill 2.0: Albums, Artists & The Chance To Win A Million Dollars!

Anteater · 05-03-2014, 11:05 PM

Anyone even vaguely familiar with 70's jazz-fusion is probably familiar with guitarist John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Along with Miles Davis and groups like Return To Forever, these were the guys who first fused hard rock and jazz together into something extraordinary to behear.

As far as that level of regard goes though, people tend to overlook 1974's Apocalypse, the album I'm reviewing here. Its not their fault really: most who jump into this group regardless of how much or little they know tend to go straight for the obvious milestones like 1971's The Inner Mounting Flame or 1973's equally lauded Birds Of Fire. And there's nothing wrong with that. Both of them are very important albums, and they did come before this one.

Still, neither of those records quite measure up to Apocalypse in all its majestic classical music-meets-hard fusion glory. Firstly, its easily the most progressive Third Stream album of all time, with Michael Tilson Thomas of the London Symphony Orchestra conducting. Furthermore, Jean-Luc Ponty has joined on violin, Narada Michael Walden has edged out Billy Cobham at the kit and you have George Martin (yes, the 5th Beatle) producing. That's a lot of crazy talent all in one place...and the results were, of course, momentous as fuck.

Ephemeral doesn't even begin to describe the music here. The expected instrumental dueling, where John and his cosmic axe of jazz-rawk reckoning collides with Ponty's manic violins and the rest is juxtaposed against these titanic, romantic orchestral sweeps that take your breath away. It's one of the best uses of contrast I've had the pleasure of hearing in recorded form, a thing particularly evident on the 18-minute 'Hymn To Him', the highlight of the set and the tune that edges this entire record over anything Mahavishnu Mach I put out. If this doesn't give you a spiritual experience, then you have no soul I'm afraid.

There's plenty of other cool things beyond that tour-de-force though. Check out 'Wings Of Karma', which starts of like some sort of Stravinsky piece before it pulls a bait-and-switch on your ears and turns into a full on jazz-rock extravaganza. Or that nebulous minute and a half or so where the serene opener 'Power Of Love' shifts sinisterly into the eruptive 'Vision Is A Naked Sword'. It's like that first time you watched Disney's 'Night On Bald Mountain' segment on Fantasia, only without the demonic imagery and with lots more guitar jammage.

No words can do justice to an album like this one. Even ol' George here considers it one of the best albums he ever worked on outside of tenure with the Fab Four, and there hasn't been another album, jazz-fusion or otherwise, that quite sounds like it either.

Jazz-fusion and classical music was not that common a hybrid even at the 70's most creative junctures, which is partly why its taken decades for this album to sink in to the lucky minority that managed to get exposed to it while it was relatively available. Weirdly enough, the truth is that its only now in the digital age that people can genuinely look back on Apocalypse for the incredible album that it was, because it is only within the last few years that we're lucky enough to have an opportunity to experience these songs on their own merits without availability limitations or being clouded by unnecessary bias of what jazz can or cannot be.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go reblow my mind by sitting through this again. Cheers!