The ever peripatetic and ever restless {$John McLaughlin} returns again to the electric {\jazz} field that he once commanded in the early '70s, while never quite landing on the same spot where he left off. A few of the familiar components are still whirring away -- the dizzyingly fast and jagged unison themes; the furious interplay with his teammates, whose personnel change on every track. But the landscape has changed again: {$McLaughlin} immerses himself deeply into the high-tech digital scenery, programming loops and backdrops (the mood piece {&"New Blues Old Bruise"} is merely a sleeker impression of what {$Pink Floyd} was doing more than three decades before). Those voices you hear on a few tracks are, of course, not real; they're sampled chorus effects as played through a controller of some sort (which anyone can do at home on a Yamaha keyboard these days). Memories of {$Shakti} -- {$McLaughlin}'s sporadically recurring Indian experiment -- are hinted at but not recalled in toto as tabla master {$Zakir Hussain} is called upon repeatedly, working himself into a frenzy on the 12-and-a-half-minute tone poem {&"Dear Dalai Lama."} Saxophonist {$Bill Evans} arrives from the 1980s version of {$Mahavishnu}; he knows his way around the {$McLaughlin} mazes of notes as well as anyone, and on the closing passage of {&"Just So Only More So,"} he and {$McLaughlin} carry on a touching, conversational dialogue on their instruments. {$Hadrien Feraud} pays effusive, voluble tribute to {$Jaco Pastorius}, not only on the obvious title {&"For Jaco,"} but also on {&"Senor C.S."} While {^Industrial Zen} is a reminder to all that {$McLaughlin} remains a formidable electric player in his sixties, the only track that really sticks in the memory is the last, {&"Mother Nature,"} with its {\electronic} revolving ostinato and {$Shankar Mahadevan}'s keening vocal. {^Industrial Zen}, indeed. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide