Spaces features John McLaughlin along with Coryell, and it's a guitar player's dream. Both guitarists have a strong grounding in rock and jazzman's ears, and they push each other to ever-new heights of wizardry, pushed in turn by bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Billy Cobham (now with Dreams).

Both guitarists blow extended electric solos on "Spaces" and "Wrong is Right." Their fast thinking and quick fingers are phenomenal, but so is their interplay; they never get in each other's way, an amazement considering the breakneck tempos. Both players have a deep understanding of their instrument, of its traditions and literature, so that attaching tags like "rock" or "jazz" or "classical" to parts of the music is futile and impossible. They just burn, and in the process set new standards for the art of modern, improvisational guitar. Comparisons between the two are as pointless as categorization. Coryell generally delivers more rapid-fire strings of notes, while McLaughlin leaves more spaces and is perhaps more into texture, but each player jumps into the other's most characteristic territory on numerous occasions.

"Rene's Theme" is the album's high point, a gut-string duet that finds the two guitarists in a Django Reinhardt bag. No guitarist can resist the magic of Django, of course, but both Coryell and McLaughlin do the Master proud, with propulsive rhythm right out of the Hot Club sides, and fingers flying on the solos. There's no sound in the world like two acoustic guitars interweaving, and the excellent Apostolic engineering captures this sound perfectly.

The other pieces feature Coryell and Vitous. "Count Miroslav," formerly with Herbie Mann, is incredibly strong on his feature, a Scott LaFaro tune, and his bowed bass sounds at times like a full, rich saxophone of the Ayler persuasion, at other times like a mad gypsy violinist. Chick Corea is added on electric piano for Julie Coryell's "Chris," and his work is characteristically open and flowing.

This is one of the most beautiful, perfectly-realized instrumental albums in a long while. The music is strong and hypnotic, and the playing of Coryell and McLaughlin should send many guitarists scurrying to the woodshed. (RS 79)

BOB PALMER