A Means To Be So Free

James Mason: Free and Sweet Power Your Embrace
From: Rhythm Of Life (Chiaroscuro, 1977)

There's something painfully bittersweet about discovering a truly great album and then subsequently discovering that the artist never produced a follow up. Barbara & Ernie's Prelude To had this effect on me and I can now add James Mason's Rhythm Of Life to the list.
One time guitarist and keyboardist to Roy Ayers, Mason's debut and swansong, released in 1977, is an album that steps outside easy genre classification combining as it does Jazz Fusion, Modern Soul and Funk.

I originally knew the track Free due to Attica Blues cover version in the late nineties and while that was by no means bad the original blows it out of the water. Bongo beats underlie a pulsating bassline and spacey synths that charge the track with a real vitality. I love the way the track is stripped down to little more than rhythm and bass with Clarice Taylor delivering superb, yearning, vocals over the top. The backing singers that layer the groove just add to the overall effect.

Sweet Power Your Embrace is undoubtedly the best known cut off the album having featured on a number of compilations but it'd good enough to warrant another run out. A highly funky instrumental for half the track the song ably displays Mason's composition skills merging electronic synths with live instrumentation before the vocals are brought into the mix and the track reaches another level. One of those albums that gets better every time you hear it, don't sleep on this.