George Duke – The Aura Will Prevail (MPS)

MPS head Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer discovered 20 year old George Duke by chance during a concert in San Francisco in 1966. A long partnership developed out of this unexpected meeting, topped off by a series of albums that Duke recorded for MPS during his Zappa phase. This 1975 recording is a reflection in concentrated quartet form of how far Duke had moved away from being, in his own view, "too conservative and serious a jazz musician," and evolved into an inventive and humorous "master of fusion."

With Santana drummer Leon "Ndugu" Chancler, bassist Alphonso "Slim" Johnson, and the Brasilian percussion sorcerer Airto Moreira, Duke designs a stunningly cinematic sound scenario that also points to him as one of the pioneers of the synthesizer. He paints a fantastic morning atmosphere in "Dawn"; in "Floop De Loop" Duke conjures animated, funky tone poems. There is a change of scene as Duke takes up the role of soulful singer on the smooth ballads "For Love" and "Fools." His onetime collaboration with the Mothers of Invention rubs off on Duke's adaptations of "Echnidna's Arf" and "Uncle Remus," and a touch of samba is added to the relaxed tropical magic of "Malibu."