By 1979 a decade had passed since Ponty and Zappa had joined forces for King Kong: by now Ponty was a rock star, with Billboard charting albums to his name. This set of reissues covers A Taste For Passion, Jean-Luc Ponty Live, Civilized Evil, Mystical Adventures and Individual Choices. As is the nature of these editions there’s no extra tracks and the sleeves are shrunken versions of the LP covers, so only humans the size of The Borrowers can actually read the notes. Though would you want to? These were not Ponty’s halcyon years, it being hard to recognise either the Grappelli-influenced young swinger or the man who changed rock and jazz fiddle for ever when he went electric. Instead these albums record his move toward increasingly soft rock options, laced with a fascination for contemporary new technology. Which means a plethora of MIDI based noodling and soaring synth sonorities. This is most spectacular on Live which still has a visceral energy to it. There are bits of Vangelis, Euro-pop and disco which make it musicologically curious. But for straightahead playing, albeit in the least ambitious of contexts, Individual Choices is more on point Ponty.