The Lost Trident Sessions

Mahavishnu Orchestra's The Lost Trident Sessions is now available, and for fusion fans, it's as if a previously unheard Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix CD just hit the streets. Since this jazz-rock supergroup (guitarist John McLaughlin, drummer Billy Cobham, keyboardist Jan Hammer, bassist Rick Laird, and violinist Jerry Goodman) made only two studio albums, this never-released 1973 set is a fabled treasure. The Orchestra's dramatic, elaborate soundscapes typify the opening cut "Dream," with its frenzied, Eastern-influenced riffery and throbbing funk passages. "Trilogy" (consisting of "The Sunlit Path", "La Mere De La Mer" and "Tomorrow's Story Not The Same") features a folkish melody rolling around in the band's electronic mesh and a paint-peeling hard-rock groove. Goodman's "I Wonder" provides a concentrically circling platform for remarkable guitar, drum, and synthesizer soloing, and "John's Song" is tense and hypnotic. The jackhammer timbres of Hammer's "Sister Andrea," like some of the album's material, was featured on the group's live album, "Between Nothingness & Eternity", recorded a few weeks later. The Lost Trident Sessions languished on a shelf in the CBS/Sony vault for 26 years because the band members held differing opinions on the quality of the material. With this music, the Orchestra had reached the peak of its volatile powers, and very possibly the apex of the entire fusion movement.