Mahavishnu Orchestra

Inner Worlds is an album by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It's the group's fifth studio album. In 1975, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and keyboardist Gayle Moran left the band. Also, all string and horn accompaniments the group used on its previous album, Visions of the Emerald Beyond, were dismissed. Stu Goldberg was brought in as a replacement for Moran, and then the album was recorded. This would be the last album by the Mahavishnu Orchestra for nearly ten years, when leader and guitarist John McLaughlin re-formed the group in 1984. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was a jazz-rock fusion group, led by John McLaughlin, that debuted in 1971 and dissolved in 1976 and reunited briefly from 1984 to 1987.

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.

The first recording of the second Mahavishnu Orchestra was a real stretch for John McLaughlin, an encounter with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra. The union wasn't taken seriously at the time, and it ended up harming the reputation of Thomas - a remarkably adventurous young conductor who defied the stuffy classical powers-that-be and thus probably delayed his eventual rise to the top - more than McLaughlin. But those with ears, then and now, beheld a remarkable series of pieces that neatly juxtapose and occasionally combine the combustion of McLaughlin's group with rich, tasteful symphonic statements orchestrated for McLaughlin by Michael Gibbs…

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.

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.

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. The band also takes time out for a brief bit of spaced-out electronic burbling and static called "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love." Yet the most enticing pieces of music on the record are the gorgeous, almost pastoral opening and closing sections to "Open Country Joy," a relaxed, jocular bit of communal jamming that they ought to have pursued further.

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…