Floating Point | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | May 20, 2008 | |||
Recorded | April 2007 | |||
Studio | AM Studios, Chennai, India | |||
Genre | Jazz | |||
Length | 1:02:28 | |||
Label | Abstract Logix | |||
Producer | John McLaughlin | |||
John McLaughlin chronology | ||||
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Floating Point is an album by John McLaughlin, released in 2008 through the record label Abstract Logix. [1] The album reached number fourteen on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart. [2]
Regarding the recording, McLaughlin commented: "while this CD features predominantly Indian musicians, we are in quite another form compared to the group Shakti... The music is for the most part 'Jazz-Fusion' if a label has to be put on it. But with the musicians involved in this project, it has also a 'world' kind of atmosphere." [3] Concerning the album title, McLaughlin remarked: "Every now and then a group of musicians will gel together in such an incredible way, and at that point it's like you lose normal gravity... you've got your own gravity happening and you're kind of like floating with the other guys." [4]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [1] |
DownBeat | [5] |
All About Jazz | [6] |
The Guardian | [7] |
Tom Hull | B+ [8] |
Michael G. Nastos of AllMusic called the album "a surprisingly fine effort, ebbing and flowing from track to track, with McLaughlin's high-level musicianship shining through, same as it ever was." [1]
In a 5-star review for DownBeat, Ken Micallef commented: "this brilliant collective plays as a single unit, not a band of hired studio guns... This is a case of Indian musicians using their extraordinary skills to explore U.S. fusion, giving the now 70-year-old guitarist an amazing platform for compositional/improvisational development. This is a landmark recording, marked by detail, subtlety and extraordinarily moving performances." [5]
John Kelman in All About Jazz wrote "One of the most fluent, evocative and powerful albums in a career filled with high points," and concluded: "McLaughlin's Indian friends may not have jazz in their blood the way it is in the guitarist's, but by approaching unmistakably western-informed music with an eastern mindset, they make Floating Point an album that, in McLaughlin's lengthy discography, is one of his most successful fusion records". [6]
Writing for The Guardian, John Fordham awarded the album 5 stars, and stated: "this boiling new set sounds as if it's driven at least as much by cutting-edge Indian crossover musicians as by McLaughlin himself... this is 99% an absolute cracker, and not just for guitar nuts either." [7]
All tracks are written by John McLaughlin
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "AbbaJi (For Alla Rakha)" | 9:01 |
2. | "Raju" | 8:21 |
3. | "Maharina" | 6:09 |
4. | "Off the One" | 6:55 |
5. | "The Voice" | 9:19 |
6. | "Inside Out" | 8:30 |
7. | "14U" | 7:07 |
8. | "Five Peace Band" | 7:06 |
Total length: | 1:02:28 |
Jazz fusion is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.
John McLaughlin, also known as Mahavishnu, is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues. After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with drummer Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.
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