The remainder of James Vincent's discography: Culmination (1974), Space Traveller (1976), and Enter In (1980)

The shockingly absolutely stunning track Freedom Divinity Struggle from Culmination:





The Christian element is very much in evidence here in all albums but particularly by the last.  It also goes without saying the LPs become more commercialized as we get closer to the migrainous year of 1980.  Culmination is chock-full of great sounds, clearly influenced by the infamous Return to Forever, but in some ways a bit more advanced in composition than what Corea attempted, or perhaps I'm just too danged sick of hearing the same old RtF tracks.

By the next album, Space Traveller, we are getting a bit more into the funkospheric environment, and as I've mentioned before with regards to many others, the influence of George Benson starts to be heard especially in the wonderful title track that really takes me back home to the space fantasies of the seventies, when, again as I've repeated before, we were promised that by the millenium (16 years ago!) we'd be colonizing not just our solar system but the closest stars as well (alpha, proxima centauri) in our ion warp drives, etc., etc.  How interesting then to hear that the Chinese expect to return a man to the moon (this time a communist one) by the year 2035-- for what, a grade school reunion party?

The short little track Stepping Up from the second album reminds me a great deal of Lenny White with his masterpiece the Venusian Suite:




But it's a real beauty isn't it?  So by the year of Enter In, 1980, we just know we aren't going to expect much, and we will thereby not be disappointed, just like in internet dating.  Actually it turns out the songwriting is quite a bit above par as you can tell from the song to Israel:





So there you go, another lost artist...