Milky Way with Ray Gomez, 1987

As usual I was looking around for other albums that might be of interest in relation to Ray Gomez, and came upon this one curiously not so well known, perhaps because of the late year of release (1987) just within the CD era, but then the powerful light shining, supernova-like, from the famous artists listed really drew me in, as you can see from the release page.

From the blurb within:

The brainchild of the composers, C. Spendel and M. Urbaniak, Milky Way is a musical concept for the 90s... mellow, melodious fare that soothes the listener, yet offers enough substance to intrigue. Armed with an arsenal of MIDI equipment that would boggle the mind, Spendel and U. weave dense, intricate danceable grooves with their instruments.  This high-tech expertise is neatly balanced by their human expression and interplay with an array of special guests: Lenny White from Return to Forever, bassist Victor Bailey of Weather Report, guitarist Ray Gomez formerly of the Stanley Clarke Band, trumpet great Randy Brecker, and vocalist Urszula Dudziak... 
Ray plays with screaming blues abandon on the ominous ballad, "Out of Brooklyn"...
here:



As a matter of fact C. Spendel was featured often in these pages, I've ripped a few of his records in the past, in the phenomenal Chameleon band, and he was also in the Jazztrack albums.  I guess Urbaniak is far too well known to bother covering here.  On the other hand while we're on the topic of Stanley Clarke, I was shocked to see he made a really all-out progressive album in the European tradition, mixing classical music and emotional depth with fusion, on the 1975 Journey to Love album-- notice the Concerto for Jazz-rock Orchestra that closes it out.  Unfortunately the beauty of that amalgam was never really replicated again in his oeuvre, at least, to my knowledge.  I'm probably making a fool of myself for not having been acquainted with that particular album.

So you can tell right away we stepped out of the magical 70s (in the previous album) and well into the fuzacky 80s with the squealing Sanborn Sax sound I complained about earlier, plus the echoey digital-like drums, and the vocal-imitating synthline that reminds me so vividly of the Pat Metheny Band.  However, the compositions sometimes are really strong, I particularly like the Mysterious Bookshop:





As well it's one of those albums that's all over the place with a very jazzy bluesy sax ballad, high-energy electric fusion, commercial garbage, etc., as well as (luckily for us) some more carefully composed tracks.