Floating Point - John McLaughlin

May

3

Floating Point - John McLaughlin

≡ Category: 2000s, Fusion, Recommended, Reviews, World Fusion |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBONOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:

Floating Point is one heck of an odd album. John McLaughlin has said that on Floating Point, he is paying tribute to his fusion roots, but he’s being too modest.

In a way, the band he’s fielding on Floating Point is the inverse of Shakti. To prepare for Shakti, McLaughlin immersed himself in the classical music of Southern India. To a degree, he was playing Indian music on the Shakti albums, but it was impossible to forget that he was approaching the music as a Westerner. On Floating Point, the music is fusion, but this time, Indian musicians are trying to play music which is foreign to them.

Sometimes this approach works out well. Other times, it does not.

On the opener, Abbaji (For Alla Rakha), the tune is all but smothered in the relentless chatter of drummer Ranjit Barot. He’s quadrupal timing the rhythms, but it just doesn’t make any sense in the context of the tune. Abbaji (For Alla Rakha) is a sort of neo-soul tune with a few Spanish touches. It should have a rich, lazy, funky feel, which is impossible while Ranjit Barot is bashing away. It doesn’t help that McLaughlin is playing synth guitar on this track, which has a much less assertive sound than his guitar. McLaughlin’s lines are beautiful, but they barely register. Soprano saxophonist George Brooks would be overwhelmed in the best of circumstances, which this isn’t.

Fortunately, the next tune, Raju, is a distinct improvement. The engaging head and rhythmic patterns harken back to the Shakti days, crossed with a blues, if that makes sense. Ranjit Barot’s drumming, while still extremely aggressive, is somewhat proportionate to the context of the tune this time out. McLaughlin’s lines are fluid and powerful, but just as importantly, they stand out, especially when he’s playing guitar instead of synth. But even the synth patches McLaughlin uses for this track have some presence. Debashish Bhattacharya add some welcome Indian flavor to the tune on an acoustic 24-string slide guitar, which he adapted from the original Hawaiian six string. Hadrien Feraud is also effective, spitting out bebop lines on electric bass. Funny thing, though. When Feraud plays highly syncopated basslines in the background, he disappears into the mix. The only flaw to Raju is how it fades out — the tune just kind of quits in the middle of an idea.

On Maharina, McLaughlin is back to playing synth guitar, this time on a sorta kinda ballad. Try as he might, and even though his lines are beautiful and fluent, he can’t manage to squeeze much lyricism out of the synth guitar. Nice try, but no cigar, John. Louiz Banks fares a little better on a synth that imitates an acoustic piano. He has the feeling, even if what he has to say isn’t that interesting.

On Off The One, drummer Ranjit Barot is surprisingly effective playing a standard rock backbeat, and then manages to keep that feel in the background while playing incredibly busy polyrhythms, which seems to be his default setting as a musician. The sound the group comes up with on this tune is very cool, too. Louiz Banks gets a sweet R&B-ish keyboard tone while McLaughlin and bamboo flautist Shashank play a very catchy unison line. Hadrien Feraud completes the feel of the tune with straight up R&B bass lines. Off The One has a very interesting structure. Four bars of melody are played. Then McLaughlin has a four bar solo, in which he kills on guitar. Then we get eight more bars of melody, after which Shashank has a four bar solo on flute that utilizes classical Indian scalar patterns. After four more bars of unison melody, drummer Ranjit Barot plays crazy polyrhythms in quadrupal time with only a synthesizer drone in the background for eight bars, with the whole cycle culminating in a unison line that breaks up the rhythm. It’s basically a Indian classical music form, but the underlying harmonies are all Western. Very cool! On the next cycle, flautist Shashank solos over the entire form until you get to the drum break, but this time, percussionist Sivamani does the honors instead. The next time around, McLaughlin has the solo, but on the drum break, keyboardist Louiz Banks gets to show off his post bop chops with only drummer Ranjit Barot’s polyrhythms for company. I should probably mention that all of the solos are virtuosic chop-fests and very tasty. Awesome tune!

Appropriate enough, on The Voice, vocalist Shankar Mahadevan takes the head. There are two main sections to this tune. The first consists of a descending four chord pattern that repeats, over which McLaughlin solos on synth guitar. The second consists of a drone, over which vocalist Shankar Mahadevan is free to improvise Carnatic melodies. Frankly, the vocal sections are more effective, largely because McLaughlin hasn’t yet figured out how to make himself as effective on synth guitar as he is on electric.

Inside Out has an irritatingly sing-song rapid-fire head that alternates with a slower section. At least, on this tune drummer Ranjit Barot mostly sticks to a rock back beat, but the way he bashes away on the cymbals, it sounds like he’s a kid playing trashcan lids. An annoying tune. By this time, the unending emphasis on virtuosity is beginning to pall.

The cheerful and bouncy major key tune 1 4 U comes to the rescue, with McLaughlin doubling the slight melody on synth guitar with flautist Shashank. I struggled for a minute or so to figure out why the groove was so familiar. Then it hit me. McLaughlin has repurposed that horrible 70s disco hit, The Hustle, and found a way to make it sound good! It just goes to show that a great artist can find inspiration anywhere. The tune is a lot of fun, especially Shashank’s flute solos. Even McLaughlin’s synth guitar can’t ruin it.

The last tune, Five Peace Band, sounds at first like it’s going to be fun. Louiz Banks is playing organ, which is a hoot in the fusion-meets-Indian context of Floating Point. Banks squeezes out chunky, funky organ comps while drummer Ranjit Barot gives us a simple medium tempo backbeat and bassist Hadrien Feraud pulls off hair trigger funk lines. Then Ranjit Barot works in his trademark polyrhythmic fills, the whole thing building to a rhythmic cadenza of chopped up beats. Unfortunately, then the tune starts. McLaughlin plays a tricky head that’s kind a modified blues, using rhythmic ideas from classical Indian music. The melody, such as it is, is reminiscent of his composition East Side, West Side, which he recorded with a revamped version of the Mahavishnu Orchestra way back in 1984. There’s nothing wrong with anyone’s playing on this track, but the overall conceit strikes me as kind of cheesy.

So, how do you come to a verdict on such a wildly uneven album?

When Floating Point is good, it’s very, very good, but there are major flaws. John McLaughlin still hasn’t found a way to make the synth guitar work for him texturally, even if has mastered it technically. And there’s a lot of synth guitar on this album. A bigger problem is that drummer Ranjit Barot approaches each tune in an identical fashion. Sometimes, on the barnburners like Raju and On The One, this works and adds excitement to the tune. More often, it doesn’t and just comes off as tasteless. Lastly, McLaughlin’s compositions, while never failing to be clever, can sometimes seem cheesy or nondescript. I’m not sure whether to pin this on this band or on his writing. Sigh.

There are two ways to go with Floating Point. You could just download the awesome tunes like Raju and On The One, or you could buy the CD and put it on random play with a bunch of other CDs to avoid burning out on Ranjit Barot’s monolithic approach to drumming. After a while, my guess is that you’ll burn the best tracks onto a custom CD.