Mahavishnu Orchestra ‎– Visions Of The Emerald Beyond

Good god, just listening to the first minutes of song one on side one and I'm already in love...
Just what I need at this very moment...
Hits me right in the heart, the first Mahavishnu album was already amazing, but this is like 10000x times better...
Highly recommended, you won't regret it...

Tis a beautiful thing to hear a young Narada Michael Walden doing some of the most ecstatic fusion drumming on virtually any release of the era. Sure, there are perhaps better technicians, and Cobham is usually favored as the Mahavishnu go-to drummer, but Walden absolutely unloads with fury that is hard to resist. The recording of the kit highlights a wonderful woody thwack from the toms as he joyfully rolls through polyrhythm fill after poly fill and marks every subdivision with silvery cymbal hits. During this recording Walden favored a compounded style of fill that relied upon switching from a four feel to an implied triplet and back again in a rapidly compressing subdivisions; when heard over the course of a bar or two the effect is a fantastic acceleration that gooses the whole band forward. Definitely playing on the very edge: that's where the fire is.

Some people find this record to have crossed that divide in fusion where pomp and emotive elements perhaps threaten to topple the delicate balances that this kind of music so often walks. For me, every once in a while, this title has a wonderful cleansing power that a lot of more serious or buttoned-down fusion just doesn't manage. The laughter at the end of side one is a delight, as are the birds that others have mentioned. It's a session that for all its density doesn't really quite touch the ground in a way that would be hard to recreate now.

Some records take time. They sit and wait until a rainy summer day like this one. When those records finally play they play very strong. On this one I love the way how the vinyl birds blend in with the ones that I can hear through my open window. Just great.

This is for me the perfect mix of rock, jazz and funk.
Not only John shines on this record but what about Jean-Luc Ponty, Ralph Armstrong (at a very very young age) and off course Michael Walden.
I never get tired of listening to this record as the production is also really good.
It is also a natural progress from the first incarnation of the band.