{"id":21621,"date":"2021-09-03T05:30:32","date_gmt":"2021-09-03T09:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21621"},"modified":"2021-08-31T14:22:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T18:22:39","slug":"album-review-john-mclaughlin-liberation-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/03\/album-review-john-mclaughlin-liberation-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: John McLaughlin &#8212; Liberation Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-21622\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/john_mclaughlin_liberation_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/john_mclaughlin_liberation_.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/john_mclaughlin_liberation_-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/john_mclaughlin_liberation_-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>A deeply spiritual artist, John McLaughlin makes music that moves the mind, body and spirit. There\u2019s certainly plenty of technical precision in his music, but with in it beats a living heart. As such, the creation of that music is greatly informed and colored by the interaction among the participants (usually some of the finest players on the planet).<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, the pandemic put at least a temporary stop to that sort of real-time interplay. The miracles of remote recording and file sharing aren\u2019t so miraculous in 2021; they\u2019re quite commonplace. But they haven\u2019t been so for John McLaughlin.<\/p>\n<p>Yet you\u2019d never know that form listening to <i>Liberation Time<\/i>, the latest form the master. Working (over distance) with several musicians who\u2019ve been on his recent albums and tours (bassist Etienne M\u2019Bapp\u00e9, percussionist Ranjit Barot, Gary Husband on keys) and others including drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, McLaughlin has created another remarkable album of instrumental finesse and ferocity. Anyone who has drawn even the slightest enjoyment from McLaughlin\u2019s recent releases with his band the 4<sup>th<\/sup> Dimension will appreciate the familiar approach \u2013 employed in new compositions \u2013 throughout this album.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLockdown Blues\u201d isn\u2019t a blues in a traditional sense; it\u2019s a showcase of McLaughlin\u2019s fiery bursts of notes, with the band hard-charging behind him, full of muscle and purpose. His tone is varied, always exciting. And M\u2019Bapp\u00e9 tears up his fretless fretboard.<\/p>\n<p>McLaughlin\u2019s instrumental pieces are always \u201cabout something,\u201d even in the absence of words. \u201cSinging Our Secrets\u201d is a supremely melodic modern jazz number built around piano. And one thing that sets Liberation Time apart from McLaughlin\u2019s other work is that instrument: piano. While Husband, Oz Esseldin and Roger Rossingnol variously perform with expected brilliance and subtlety, two of the album\u2019s tracks \u2013 \u201cMila Repa\u201d and \u201cShade of Blue\u201d feature McLaughlin himself on solo piano. At times, his gentle yet commanding approach to the instrument feels \u2013 but doesn\u2019t explicitly sound \u2013 like Bill Evans. He conveys melancholy effectively in the brief \u201cShade of Blue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the album ends on a more \u201cup\u201d note with the title track, a trio piece featuring Husband on drums with bassist Sam Burgess. Its musical flights demonstrate that four decades after the release of <i>The Inner Mounting Flam<\/i>e and Miles\u2019 <i>Jack Johnson<\/i>, John McLaughlin remains a vital and expressive creative force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A deeply spiritual artist, John McLaughlin makes music that moves the mind, body and spirit. There\u2019s certainly plenty of technical precision in his music, but with in it beats a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,40,42,49,65],"tags":[1187],"class_list":["post-21621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","category-instrumental","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-review","tag-john-mclaughlin","cat-32-id","cat-40-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21623,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621\/revisions\/21623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}