Tune in, turn on, jazz out

John McLaughlin’s Manila visit was more than enough  to satisfy jazz fans and fusion fanatics who worship at the altar of virtuosity.

There’s this stare that John McLaughlin has when he’s deep into a guitar solo — one of those stuttering machine-gun runs where he picks out 32 notes every second — that kind of reminds me of Timothy Leary: it’s that infinite godhead guru look, like he’s peering straight through the guitar neck, straight through the molecules of the audience members, into some way-out-there beyond.

Or maybe it’s the fourth dimension. That’s the name of McLaughlin’s current touring band, incidentally (Gary Husband on keys and drums, Etienne M’Bappe on bass, and Ranjid Barot on drums and “mouth tabla”) and they passed by Manila’s Sofitel Hotel last Sunday for a night of cocktails and head-banging fusion.

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny sometimes, as Frank Zappa so famously pointed out. But jazz in Manila has another peculiarity: it’s a rarefied thing, priced way beyond the C-D market that arguably is not interested in jazz anyway. So off to Sofitel Hotel’s Sunset Pavilion, thanks to Igan D’Bayan, where a main chapter of this year’s Philippine Jazz Festival unfolds featuring the stage juggernaut that is McLaughlin and the Fourth Dimension.

The Timothy Leary double-take is understandable: McLaughlin, now 72, wears similar silver tresses down the back of his neck, as well as a toothy white smile and an imperious look at times, like the grad professor who’s “seen things.” Well, after igniting Miles Davis’ “electric period,” launching Mahavishnu Orchestra as the ‘70s fusion rocket, becoming one with Shakti, jamming with Santana, Paco De Lucia and Al Di Meola, he has seen a lot of things.

And now it’s back to fusion, the kind that freely appropriated rock and world music, among other things, before melding into snoozy fusak in the ‘80s.

With a set that touched on tracks like Guitar Love (from 2012’s “Now Here This”) as well as a single Mahavishnu track as an encore (You Know, You Know), McLaughlin’s visit was more than enough (100 minutes) to satisfy jazz fans and fusion fanatics who worship at the altar of virtuosity.

Shifting moods from two opening blues numbers (with stunning synth solos from Husband — yo, Jan Hammer in the house!), the Fourth Dimension stepped into the mystic on Echoes From Then, which allowed for some halftime grooving and mellow call and response vocalizing. See, McLaughlin’s a hippie at heart — “Nothing wrong with peace and love,” he told the Manila audience at one point — and this entails a certain mindset: you have to enter McLaughlin’s dimension, not the other way around.

Virtuosity was the order of the evening, with Camaroonian bassist M’Bappe — his name almost onomatopoeic of his sound — serving up slices of funky slap bottom that traded wonderfully with Barot’s double- and triple-time fills. Against that McLaughlin was the anchor, serving up heavy metal riffs that seesawed the band into motion. He often just stood to the side, like a circus master watching the other circus rings take over.

Husband was the wild card of the night, whether dipping into melodic piano runs on Nord and Yamaha, duplicating McLaughlin’s intricate themes on synth or stepping behind the second drum kit to double-team with Barot on several numbers.

Barot was the other standout, with a couple turns as the human tabla (moments that recalled ‘70s band Shakti) introducing Indian syncopation into the mix.

While there was a great deal of emotion in M’Bappe and Husband’s soloing, it does strike me that McLaughlin himself, for all his remarkable speed and agility, can be a somewhat clinical, abstract player. Often, the shards of jazz riffs that come shearing from his guitar (shades of Coltrane’s sheets of sound) provide more of a sound mosaic than a lyrical feel to his solos. But then again, he can be exquisitely dynamic when the mood strikes, especially when he takes the mood down and offers pithy, pensive moments in the spotlight (like his tribute song to Carlos Santana early in the set).

The material from “Now Here This” and the more recent “The Boston Record” (recorded live at Berklee College of Music) provide sound material for this band to chew on, and there was some serious chewing going on at Sunset Pavilion. Good to see Krip Yuson there (with jazz guitarist son Aya), sharing beverages and waxing freely on McLaughlin’s stamina as a septuagenarian; as well as local jazzhead Johnny Alegre, who had the rare privilege of driving McLaughlin around town during his visit.

Jazz in Manila is a funny idea, because you have to have your ears tuned a certain way to pick it up at all. (Philippine Jazz Festival needs to work more consistently with its media friends if it wishes to spread the word better.) There are still nooks and crannies here and there that offer a bit of quality playing that looks, sounds and even smells like jazz. Again, you have to have special ears to catch it. Or to be able to peer into the fourth dimension.