Live Review: John McLaughlin & The Fourth Dimension

'Blistering' and 'virtuosic' are often used to describe legendary guitarist John McLaughlin's performances, and he certainly lives up to those expectations tonight. A stalwart of jazz fusion scenes who have played and recorded with the genre-buckling likes of Miles Davis, Chick Corea and Carlos Santana, 73-year-old McLaughlin is still in prime shape. Backed by The 4th Dimension consisting of drummer Ranjit Barot, bassist Etienne M'Bappe and keyboardist/drummer Gary Husband, McLaughlin blazes through the evening with pulse-racing energy and sonic burnouts.

The band opens with Guitar Love, a rollicking blues track that warms up McLaughlin's famous howling riffs and guttural growls. His mastery of the instrument is impressive to behold up close — lightning quick, fluid and precise. He leaps octaves with a single stroke and seems to physically stretch the stem of his guitar before our eyes. His equally gifted bandmates have plenty of opportunity in the setlist to display their own virtuosity. Barot blends his Indian music background with rapid scat vocals to produce driving rhythms. M'Bappe easily matches McLaughlin on his bass guitar, his hand movements so rapid as he pumps out a solo in the feverish Hijacked that they literally become a blur. Husband — who together with M'Bappe had collaborated with McLaughlin in his 2010 album To The One — performs double duty on the keyboard/synthesiser and a lighter drum set with lithe-fingered finesse, balancing McLaughlin's flash-and-vapour with earthiness. In several kinetic-fuelled duets against Barot's muscle-bristling poundings, Husband plays the melodies with piercing nimbleness, darting around half-impishly.

The first half of the performance is more textured with the varied tempos in the band's tracks, notably with the inclusion of the smouldering Light At The Edge Of The World, a cover by influential free style jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. McLaughlin's yearning guitar playing as a substitution to the sax at first seems miscalculated, but in fact, it perfectly displays his mastery in tremulous grooves and highly nuanced chords. Rarely has a guitar sung so soulfully. 

Another Sanders cover, The Creator Has A Master Plan features all the band members layering lyrics in the umbo weti yodeling style of Leon Thomas, the vocalist in Sanders's original version. It is almost a lullaby, a gentle refrain. McLaughlin also dusted off one from memory lane — New Blues, Old Bruise from the time he had performed as one fifth of the Five Peace Band which had included Chick Corea. The encore of Abbaji is a tribute to Alla Rakha, an Indian tabla player whom McLaughlin cites as a personal mentor and 'loved, respected one'. 

To watch John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension perform is to marvel with jaw-dropping astonishment at their sheer technical brilliance. Far from being aged silver foxes, their high-octane, powerhouse performance sure leaves the younger cubs wanting.