John Mclaughlin Industrial Zen CD

Since the 1970's John McLaughlin's long career has always taken mysical turns, from the Mahavishnu Orchestra to Shakti. Here on "Industrial Zen", McLaughlin turns his well honed skills to Jazz fusion. He is joined by many names that brought power-house jazz fusion to the frontline during the '90's, including Bill Evans, Gary Husband, Mark Mondesir, Vinnie Colauta and Dennis Chambers as well as Texas guitar legend Eric Johnson.

Personnel: John McLaughlin (vocals, guitar, fretless guitar, programming, drum programming); Shankar Mahadevan (vocals); Eric Johnson (guitar); Ada Rovatti, Bill Evans (soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone); Gary Husband (keyboards, drums); Otmaro Ruíz (synthesizer); Hadrien Feraud, Tony Gray, Matthew Garrison (bass guitar); Mark Mondasir, Dennis Chambers, Vinnie Colaiuta (drums); Zakir Hussain (tabla); Marcus Wippersberg (drum programming).
Widely recognized as one of the most innovative and influential guitar players since the 1960s, John McLaughlin has forged a musical path that has seen him flirt with everything from hard rock to world music. A fusion player in the true sense of the word, McLaughlin continued his progressive stylistic synthesis on 2006's INDUSTRIAL ZEN. While the guitarist is also known for his meditative work (especially his experiments with Indian music), INDUSTRIAL ZEN is something of a return to the jazz fusion that marked McLaughlin's work with Miles Davis and his own group the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Drummer Dennis Chambers, saxophonist Bill Evans, and guitar virtuoso Eric Johnson, among others, are on hand to lend sparks to the icon's six-string wizardry.
The ever peripatetic and ever restless John McLaughlin returns again to the electric jazz field that he once commanded in the early '70s, while never quite landing on the same spot where he left off. A few of the familiar components are still whirring away -- the dizzyingly fast and jagged unison themes; the furious interplay with his teammates, whose personnel change on every track. But the landscape has changed again: McLaughlin immerses himself deeply into the high-tech digital scenery, programming loops and backdrops (the mood piece "New Blues Old Bruise" is merely a sleeker impression of what Pink Floyd was doing more than three decades before). Those voices you hear on a few tracks are, of course, not real; they're sampled chorus effects as played through a controller of some sort (which anyone can do at home on a Yamaha keyboard these days). Memories of Shakti -- McLaughlin's sporadically recurring Indian experiment -- are hinted at but not recalled in toto as tabla master Zakir Hussain is called upon repeatedly, working himself into a frenzy on the 12-and-a-half-minute tone poem "Dear Dalai Lama." Saxophonist Bill Evans arrives from the 1980s version of Mahavishnu; he knows his way around the McLaughlin mazes of notes as well as anyone, and on the closing passage of "Just So Only More So," he and McLaughlin carry on a touching, conversational dialogue on their instruments. Hadrien Feraud pays effusive, voluble tribute to Jaco Pastorius, not only on the obvious title "For Jaco," but also on "Senor C.S." While Industrial Zen is a reminder to all that McLaughlin remains a formidable electric player in his sixties, the only track that really sticks in the memory is the last, "Mother Nature," with its electronic revolving ostinato and Shankar Mahadevan's keening vocal. Industrial Zen, indeed. ~ Richard S. Ginell

Down Beat (p.92) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "McLaughlin is inspired, creating dense vamps in indecipherable odd-metered rhythms that his coterie of drummers and bassists navigate with grace."
JazzTimes (pp.68-69) - "[S]onically ambitious. INDUSTRIAL ZEN is a complex fusion outing with a rotating cast of virtuoso players."