Indo Jazz Fusions, Larry Adler

"This is one of those occasions when we 'labellers of music' get stuck in our own glue. Consider the complication: A group called Indo Jazz Fusions containing Indian and British musicians, an American-born guest, and the result, a uniquely beautiful music which is patently not quite Indian, not quite jazz, not quite contemporary-American. I think the most accurate thing you can say is that it can only be played the way it is by men in contact with the jazz tradition.

The group is led, and all the compositions save one were written, by John Mayer. Born in Calcutta, trained first in Indian music, then in classical European music, he came to England about twenty years ago to pursue an orchestral career as a violinist. More recently he has devoted his time entirely to composition and to his Indo Jazz Fusions unit, an idea dating from four or five years ago. As a group it's been through a number of changes so that now it's a very fiery, jazzy unit indeed, which doesn't mean that it's no longer Indian, as can be heard in the first piece - Raga Malika, based on the rules of the classical Indian raga, a set scale of notes - a kit of parts almost - from which all the resulting solos are built. The rhythm in that case, twelve beats. Not to a bar so much as twelve beats in a recurring cycle.

I think that Britain is the only place where so many elements could be brought together so successfully." - Peter Clayton