Elegant Gypsy

Performer: Al Di Meola
Artist: Mingo Lewis; Steve Gadd; Anthony Jackson; Jan Hammer; Paco De Lucia
Distributor: Sony Music Entertainment

Notes: DiMeola made his name as a member of Chick Corea's groundbreaking fusion supergroup Return To Forever, but it wasn't long before he embarked on a solo career, of which this album is the second installment. DiMeola takes the electric, rock-inflected jazz approach of John McLaughlin and multiplies it exponentially, upping both the wattage and the speed. He offers a few lyrical acoustic passages (foreshadowing his later collaborations with Paco DeLucia [who guests here] and McLaughlin), but the focus of ELEGANT GYPSY is DiMeola's blistering, mile-a-minute electric fretwork. He spins out endless lines of death-defying sixteenth notes, sometimes in tandem with synth wizard Jan Hammer, over slightly funky rhythms that bear a hint of Latin influence. His thick, overdriven tone and superhuman abilities, displayed to their fullest here, make the Eddie Van Halens of the world look like underachievers.

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