This is the third incarnation of John McLaughlin's electric orchestra. The first was a small recording group heard on the Douglas label, My Goal's Beyond. The phenomenally successful second M.O. introduced Billy Cobham and Jan Hammer to large audiences and established McLaughlin as the premier heavy axe on the jazz/rock continuum. With the new M.O. John essays to bring his music to Symphony Hall, orchestrating his group with the London Symphony Orchestra. The resultant album is a plausible concept but lacks depth and dynamics.

The new band measures up to the old in basic sound and technique. Violinist Jean-Luc Ponty plays with a softer, more European sound than did Jerry Goodman. Michael Waldon is a good drummer who has captured the essentials of Billy Cobham's style without quite the latter's flawless attack. Gayle Moran on piano, bassist Ralphe Armstrong and three string players competently fill out the sound. To guide the fusion of his little orchestra with the London Symphony, McLaughlin chose the former enfant terrible of the Boston Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, a conductor whose specialty is coaxing exotic tones and rhythms from philharmonic orchestras (check his brilliant recordings of Ives's "Three Places in New England" and Charles Ruggles's "Sun Treader").

Apocalypse continues the M.O. celebration of the spiritual life with such titles as "Vision Is a Naked Sword" and "Wings Of Karma." "Power Of Love" is a meditation for acoustic guitar and symphony orchestra that gets the highest marks for McLaughlin's simple virtuosity. But the big orchestra is often misused and ill-placed. Thomas builds a sound on huge, sweeping vamps (which formerly were played by McLaughlin alone in his small groups) that are somewhat pompous in this context.

And on "Smile of the Beyond" we are given a vocal and orchestral arrangement reminiscent of Gabriel Faure's Requiem mass. This romantic soup sounds totally incongruous with the addition of a hard rock band and then a Moody Blues chorale.

In addition to Faure, McLaughlin seems to draw his symphonic influence from Brahms, Mahler, Satie. Throughout the album these modes interweave with his usual energized riffing guitar work. In this heady clime, violinist Ponty occasionally sounds like he's been hanging around gypsies too long and the other players simply get lost. The conductor contributes a nice piano part here and there.

The major effect is that of goulash. The album is mixed so that the listener isn't able to hear the synthesis of the big band with the little. The two entities usually play separately and the fusion isn't consummated. (RS 166)

STEPHEN DAVIS