Jean Luc Ponty A Taste For Passion

Despite the title, this release is more subdued than its predecessors on the shelves, more tightly controlled, more conventional in instrumentation. Jean-Luc Ponty temporarily pulls back on electronic display for its own sake, even permitting some acoustic instruments to take the fore, and the recorded sound is drier and less lustrous.

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music
Dreamy. Ethereal. Beautiful. These are the words that first spring to mind whenever I listen to A Taste for Passion by Jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty.

A pioneer of the electric violin in the 1970’s, and an inspired manipulator of sequencers and synthesisers in the 1980’s, Jean-Luc Ponty is the undisputed master of his instrument in this area. Experimenting with electronics and synthesis, he liberated the violin’s image and capabilities from classical or folk settings. After cutting several albums for the World Pacific label in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, In 1974, fresh from a tour with the Mahavishnu Orchestra until he signed a solo deal with Atlantic Records. Throughout the next decade, he was to record a dozen visionary albums, 5 of which are included here.

Mystical Adventures expands Jean-Luc Ponty's palette slightly with the introduction of part-time percussionist Paulinho Da Costa and the use of a vocoder on a couple of tracks. Otherwise, it's the same mixture of mildly intoxicating arpeggios and flights of fancy that you'd find in various amounts on any Ponty album from this period.