Birds of Fire - Mahavishnu Orchestra

Aug

16

Birds of Fire - Mahavishnu Orchestra

≡ Category: 1970s, Essential, Fusion, Reviews |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING

Rating:

The second Mahavishnu Orchestra studio album, Birds of Fire, was recorded in the middle of a grueling tour. It shows. Whereas the instrumental doubling could be sometimes shaggy on the band’s fiery debut, The Inner Mounting Flame, by the time they recorded Birds of Fire, the band was like one brain with 10 hands and 10 feet.

The sound is somewhat more refined, too. In place of the brute force of a tune like Vital Transformation, you’ve got the still white-hot, but more focused energy of the opener Birds of Fire. Birds of Fire fades in on some very bizarre arpeggiated chords in a 9/8 time signature on electric guitar fed through a flanger, accompanied by Billy Cobham’s flaring cymbals. Then Rick Laird (bass) and Jerry Goodman (violin) start doubling a bass line. Finally, John McLaughlin’s guitar and Jerry Goodman’s violin rip into the pentatonic melody. The complexity is bewildering. You’re not quite sure what you’re listening to the first time you hear it. When McLaughlin starts soloing, it’s in a proto-heavy metal style that isn’t scalar, but rather imitative of a typical blues pentatonic scales but using a different harmonic scheme. Very cool stuff.

Miles Beyond starts out more gently. It’s an attractive scheme of several chromatic series of dominant 7th chords, again in an odd time signature, this time 5/4. At the song progresses, the drums get more aggressive, and McLaughlin launches into some power chords. Then the melody starts in, doubled by McLaughlin and Goodman, and all pretense of normalcy is lost. It’s a bizarre and somehow beautiful melody, like something out of a lost and savage civilization. Amazingly, after the statement of the theme, there is a very quiet solo by Jerry Goodman, almost entirely plucked out on the violin. The next solo is by McLaughlin and it’s all machine gun quasi pentatonic riffs, telepathically echoed by drummer Billy Cobham. It’s quite a performance.

As in The Inner Mounting Flame, Birds of Fire has some lyrical interludes to balance the instrumental freakouts.

Sanctuary is a case in point, an intense and haunting minor key ballad.

There’s only one acoustic piece, the Celtic flavored Thousand Island Park. It’s a trio, with Rick Laird playing standup acoustic bass, and beautifully, too. Apparently, he was the house bassist at Ronnie Scott’s in London for a number of years.

Or, for something completely different, there’s Open Country Joy. The opening and closing sections are positively bucolic, and dare I say it, mellow.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that keyboardist Jan Hammer was just beginning to explore the sonic possibilities of synthesizers on this release, so his sonic palette is considerably widened, compared to his work on The Inner Mounting Flame. Also, at this point in his career, he was incapable of playing anything less than a spectacular solo. (For more evidence, check out his work with Elvin Jones and Jeff Beck.)

The point is, there’s plenty of variety, cohesive ensemble playing, virtuostic improvisation, and mind bogglingly complex and intricate song structures on hand. Birds of Fire is an absolute fusion classic, and absolutely indispensable for fans of the genre.