John McLaughlin – Music For Abandoned Heights (Impex)

John McLaughlin's Music for Abandoned Heights brings the guitarist's long-running search for new settings into film music, with a score written for the New York-set noir of the same name. Rather than treating it as background-only material, McLaughlin shapes the album as a standalone program, moving between heated fusion and more reflective ballads while keeping the drama of the script in view.

That mix suits an artist whose catalogue runs from Extrapolation and the Mahavishnu Orchestra to later acoustic and collaborative work. Here, his electric and acoustic guitar lines are backed by close musical partners including Gary Husband on drums and keyboards, Julian Siegel on saxophone, and bassists Misha Mullov-Abbado and Etienne Mbappe9. The tougher passages give pieces like "The Scene" real momentum, while "Nathaniel & Christine" shows how much space and tenderness McLaughlin can draw from the same ensemble.

This Impex edition also helps explain why the album has become a vinyl title worth seeking out: the score was composed and recorded in 2025, then issued by Impex in early 2026, giving one of jazz fusion's defining guitarists a neatly focused entry in a part of his career he had not explored so fully on record before.

Features

• LP, 33RPM, 180g, Impex
• Mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering
• Pressed at RTI
• Recorded and mixed by George Murphy at Eastcote Studios, London
• Deluxe booklet with studio photography and new notes by John McLaughlin and Walter Kolosky