STANLEY CLARKE

Stanley Clarke second solo album has great list of participated musicians: Stanley's RTF colleague guitarist Bill Connors, Tony Williams and Ian Hammer, plus Airto Moreira. And music presented there is good. But not excellent.

In fact, all this work sounds very much as RTF or Mahavishnu Orchestra side-project. Great musicians, plenty of nice musical moments. Very competent jazz fusion, even with some harder moments. Clarke's bass is significant as usual. I don't like too much Connor's guitar work, but I must agree he plays very competent here.

So - what is a problem? I think ,there are two reasons, why this work is far not a masterpiece. First of all - composition. Separate pieces, moments and nuances sound great, but not a whole music. Mostly because there is no a whole music like that. Just huge collection of great and not so great musical sketches.

And the other reason I believe Stanley just tried to stay on a safe side there. All you will hear is nice, but heard many times before. No experimentation, not even small new spark. Just great safe music, played by one of the best fusion musicians of their time.

Really nice work for fans and collectors, but searching for essential jazz fusion just try in the other place.