A visit to the nerve center of jazz fusion: It was November, 1977, and Alphonse Mouzon, “the fastest drummer in the world”, as a Scandinavian critic coined him, entered the recording Studio in Stuttgart, Germany. Mouzon had assembled an impressive list of creative minds around him. For one thing, he would be recording with his working band at the time, keyboard player Stu Goldberg, bassist Miroslav Vitous, and saxophonist Bob Malik; Vitous was one of the founding members of Weather Report and brought that super group’s musical philosophy with him. He had also invited two close friends, guitarist Philip Catherine and pianist Joachim Kühn, along for the ride. These two would also be contributing a substantial number of compositions to the mix. In the middle of this illustrious circle, Mouzon showed how protean his playing could be. There is his irrepressible power and drive, as in Nightmare, the fantastically rocking The Ram and the Scorpio, and the tour de force duo with Vitous on The Light. Yet there are also calmer, quieter moments as in Catherine’s fanciful Electric Moon, or Kuhn’s ballad-like Shoreline and its sensitive saxophone lines. With its hymn-like guitar improvisations, the title piece seems to be in love with melody. And then there are the acoustic-electric overdubs of the keyboards and bass that conjure up some magnificent musical textures.