The original Mahavishnu Orchestra was the most important single force in breaking the pop barrier for jazzderived electric music; its converts, having found in the group's virtuosic soloing and thunderous ensemble presence a revelation of taste-shaping magnitude, never quite forgave guitarist John McLaughlin for disbanding. The release last year of a generally disappointing album featuring a recently formed Mahavishnu Two and the London Symphony Orchestra seemed to confirm the diehards' worst suspicions. The more McLaughlin insisted that M.O. Two was the real Mahavishnu Orchestra, the more M.O. One fans disagreed. It was widely believed that McLaughlin had blissed out into the Great Beyond and would never again play the kind of tension-filled, skull-shattering music that had won him his following in the first place.

Visions, its title notwithstanding, suggests that McLaughlin knew what he was doing all along. It has its tender moments, lyrical interludes hanging suspended out of tempo, but heavily amplified guitar/bass unison riffs and thudding fatback drumming keep breaking through. The goal may be Beyond (as the title of an earlier McLaughlin album proclaimed) but for the time being the music is loud, hard, visceral rock & roll, with a marked tendency toward getting down in the funk of physical existence. The pretentious orchestral overkill of the previous LP is gone, and so is the push-pull of egos which sometimes made listening to the old band a nerve-racking or numbing experience.

Round-robin soloing was obligatory with the original M.O. Billy Cobham, Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman were constantly attempting to outdo each other's epiphanies, and there came a time when ensemble spirit had withered. M.O. Two has only two featured soloists — McLaughlin and the French violin wizard Jean-Luc Ponty—and is a better band for it. Gayle Moran adds light, shimmering keyboard touches and a pure soprano voice which sometimes soars over the ensemble's massed voices, but she isn't trying to replace Hammer. Bassist Ralph Armstrong is both funkier and more fluid than his predecessor, Rick Laird, and drummer Michael Walden, who failed to impress on the Orchestra's previous outing, proves himself a ten-handed powerhouse who can drive as hard as Cobham but doesn't feel the need to assert himself as vociferously.

Places in the music which the old band would have filled with solos are now dominated by the M.O.'s self-contained horn section and string trio. This means McLaughlin is writing more and he has never packed this many vivid melodic flourishes and varied instrumental voicings into a single LP. "Eternity's Breath," which opens the album, includes a violin/guitar section which makes use of Indian motifs without recourse to clichés, a sonorous choral arrangement for the group's singing voices, lightning-fast string-section arpeggios over brass chords and solos by McLaughlin and Ponty which are both intense and to the point. Drummer Walden's "Cosmic Strut" finds the rhythm section laying down a nasty groove and the brass players sounding as stridently right as the MarKeys. The concluding "On the Way Home to Earth" features guitar with tonal expanders and sounds like a cross between Led Zeppelin and Sun Ra.

Fans of McLaughlin's guitar dexterity may feel that Visions has too much arranged material and too little improvisational development. But like another prominent English guitarist, Eric Clapton, McLaughlin seems to be turning away from the role of virtuoso and finding fulfillment in the creation of more premeditated musical presentations. Perhaps his albums and concerts with Carlos Santana taught him something important about editing both the length and the complexity of his solos. Perhaps the experience of Mahavishnu One taught him that a string of good solos does not necessarily make good music. In any event, Visions of the Emerald Beyond is the best Mahavishnu Orchestra album since The Inner Mounting Flame, and an achievement which most of McLaughlin's competitors, M.O. graduates included, will find it difficult to equal. (RS 188)

BOB PALMER