Electric and acoustic guitarist David Pritchard's second album as a leader shows much promise in that he is not beholden to preset concepts on how to play contemporary jazz. Far from straight-ahead or new age inclinations, he's fusing elements of rock, R&B, and jazz tastefully, with a sense of wonder, and the bold invention of predecessors like John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Ralph Towner, and Harvey Mandel. Pritchard wrote all of this electrically charged material, and has assembled a mighty band of Californians, with keyboardist Patrice Rushen, fretless electric bass guitar studio veteran Larry Klein, the wonderful saxophonist Charles Orena, lesser-known Bruce Malament on the Prophet 5 synthesizer, drummers Chester Thompson or Mike Jochum, and guest trumpeter Freddie Hubbard on two of the five tracks. This very talented ensemble practically subsumes Pritchard's personal sound, which in part resembles Pat Metheny with a touch of Larry Carlton. It is the first two selections where Hubbard and Orena are paired up that are the most intriguing, with the curiously titled "Hog Futures" a fat, horn-driven, ripe fusion of two-note, bass-bouncing funk with Pritchard's steely Santana-like guitar, while "Black & White" has a strummed acoustic guitar base under Klein's cresting lines in a fast and loose stew, with Hubbard's fleet solo as an exclamation point. Thompson's drumming on these tracks, and the sweet "As Day & Night" is as spot-on as his other more famous projects with Weather Report and Genesis, as Pritchard's prettier side comes out in gossamer stair-steps, leading this melody without the horns. Jochum replaces Thompson for the extended "Bright Depths," a highly formulated piece with Pritchard's quick triplet figures and cascading fingerstyle inventions leading to a cut-time, two-beat segment, Orena's singing, high-octave soprano sax, Rushen's incredible piano contributions, and a 6/8 portion that suggests African or Latin approaches. The serene "Angel's Flight" is contrastingly non-developed and takes a while to warm up via Orena's tenor sax, Klein's deft solo, and an intensified mid-section. This is an admirable effort for David Pritchard considering this was a band of established stars playing with virtual unknowns, but they all come together to make music that is in its own way commanding, true to itself, not at all too derivative, and an individual statement that stands tall for the time period when jazz fusion was starting to wane.
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