Fire Island

Birds of Fire is Mahavishnu Orchestra’s second studio album. It was released in 1973. It is the last one performed by the original Mahavishnu Orchestra line-up, before Jean-Luc Ponty replaced Jerry Goodman on violin and Narada Michael Walden replaced Billy Cobham on drums.

Emboldened by the popularity of Inner Mounting Flame among rock audiences, the first Mahavishnu Orchestra set out to further define and refine its blistering jazz-rock direction in its second – and, no thanks to internal feuding, last – studio album. Although it has much of the screaming rock energy and sometimes exaggerated competitive frenzy of its predecessor, Birds of Fire is audibly more varied in texture, even more tightly organized, and thankfully more musical in content. A remarkable example of precisely choreographed, high-speed solo trading – with John McLaughlin, Jerry Goodman, and Jan Hammer all of one mind, supported by Billy Cobham's machine-gun drumming and Rick Laird's dancing bass – can be heard on the aptly named "One Word," and the title track is a defining moment of the group's nearly atonal fury.

Some artists, once settled on a sound that suits them, are content simply to plough the same unimaginative furrow year after year, album after album. Whether it’s complacence, in the knowledge that their loyal fan base will continue to dip into their pockets, a lack of the talent and inspiration necessary to evolve or (in cases such as Stereophonics) both, more often than not these meat and potato acts slowly fade away into irrelevance with the passing of the years. It’s refreshing, then, to listen to Foam Island, the latest release by London-based duo Darkstar, so clearly is it the work of people willing to take risks to move their music forward.