FIFTH ELEMENT

Like "Eclipse", this long-shelved album has a few pretty good tracks. Only a diehard Jade Warrior fan would be happy after shelling out the full import price for this, though. Too bad they didn't just release all of the decent material from both albums on one disc. That reportedly was the original intent in 1973, to release a two-record set.

The second of 2 JADE WARRIOR albums recorded in 1973 but not released until 1998 reflects yet another dynamic shift in the "direction" of the trio, if one can refer to their path as having any direction whatsoever. Even though it was recorded during the same period as "Eclipse" and perhaps shared with it some of the same sessions, "Fifth Element" does not express the same genotypes and phenotypes. Moreover, it offers the most direct of all possible links to the impending Island years, in the form of an early version of "On the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers" that would appear for the first time on 1974's "Floating World", an album that many who are not frozen on the "early albums are best" mantra feel is their finest moment, BRIAN ENO apparently among them.

Now, "Mountain of Fruit..." is lovely, no question, but one must consciously clear the memory banks to appreciate how it must have sounded before its first official appearance on record. Yes, a brilliant if characteristically protracted - the first official version would run 2 minutes shorter and is better for it - exposition of where the group was going, and how well they could manage without Glyn Havard's stoned King Crimson narrations. What is most surprising is how, in a lucid breakthrough, they don't completely dismantle that premise over the next 35 minutes, with or without Havard.

This is a far mellower proposition than "Eclipse". The exceptions are Discotechnique which is as bad as it sounds, and "24 Hour Movie", both of which are more akin to the mundane rockers of "Last Autumn's Dream" than the off kilter experiments of "Eclipse", The ballads "Hey Rainy Day" and "Annie", along with the surprising "Have you Ever" which combines both reflective and aggressive aspects, all reside in a slightly less gentrified neighborhood than their sisters on earlier albums. "We are the One", though grammatically wanting, might have been an influence for the likes of CAMEL, STEVE HACKETT and ROUSSEAU, and, if one can believe JADE WARRIOR fans, they probably were. On the instrumental side, "Yam Jam" reflects a continued generally Latin American and specifically SANTANA influence in the rhythms and guitars, and is rather tasty as well.

One of the interpretations for the Fifth Element is that of the aether, from which earth, air, fire and water are all formed. This is sometimes conceptualized as God, or, more universally, as spirit. There you have it, JADE WARRIOR introducing the new age fully 10 years before its commercial ascendancy. They would go on to define it in utero over the next 5 years.

Jade Warrior had a rough time of it in 1973. A tour of the United States ended up a shambolic mess, due to botched paperwork forcing them to cancel early dates until they got their work permits sorted out, and this led to a worsening of relations within the band, as the divergent musical approaches espoused by Glyn Havard on the one hand and Jon Field and Tony Duhig on the other began to pull the group apart.

Duhig and Field would eventually be responsible for the group's magnificent Island-era albums, and their preferred style involved the relaxing world music-ish, New Age-y, mellow-but-experimental sound which gave the early Jade Warrior albums a unique spin. Havard, for his part, had somewhat more conventional ideas about their musical direction, and was responsible for the more heavy psych and proto-prog influenced sounds in their early material.

Returning from America, they'd recorded one album - Eclipse - and had gone on a tour of Holland which proved to be just as discouraging as their US jaunt when they received shocking news - Vertigo were shelving the album and releasing them from their contract. The band were shocked; Eclipse had come very, very close to release, to the point where test pressings had been made and a couple of tracks had appeared on Vertigo samplers, and what's more the band's contract with Vertigo had them down for no less than six albums.

Their objections ultimately came to nothing; Vertigo made it clear to the band that they simply were not interested in putting out any more Jade Warrior music, and that the group were welcome to go their own way and regard the contractual commitments on both sides as moot. Eventually, the band did exactly that - but before they did, they rushed back from Holland to their studio in London, grabbed some of the off-cuts which didn't make it onto Eclipse, and quickly recorded enough additional music to make it a full album, thinking that by delivering Vertigo with two albums instead of one they could try and pressure them into making good on the original contract.

It was all for nothing, of course - but we did at least get Fifth Element out of the process, eventually getting an official release in 1998 alongside Eclipse. (More recently, Esoteric have put out a two-CD set of the albums, allowing listeners to get the full Jade Warrior output of 1973 in one convenient package.)

Whilst Eclipse was undoubtedly a finished Jade Warrior album - indeed, it has a sound which is more cohesive than any of their first three albums, but at the same time distinctly different from the approach they would take on their Island albums - you should mentally stick an asterisk next to Fifth Element due to the circumstances of its creation. Sure, it's Jade Warrior playing the music on here, but is this really an album Jade Warrior would have made under ordinary circumstances, or an absolute oddity, the product of them mashing together some material in a hurry in a desperate bid to save their Vertigo contract?

In my opinion, it's clearly the latter, but that's kind of what makes it interesting; it's Jade Warrior making a whole bunch of risky musical choices in the hope of producing something which would give Vertigo second thoughts about dropping them. Jon Field has admitted in later years that he and Tony Duhig were rather taking a backseat during this time, with the challenging circumstances the band were facing leaving them discouraged, prompting Glyn Havard to step up, and that dynamic is certainly in play here, which already sets up an instant contrast with the first three Vertigo albums - but the balance isn't quite the same as on Eclipse either.

Duhig and Field, indeed, aren't completely checked out; the album opens with On the Mountain of Fruit, an early version of what would become The Mountain of Fruit and Flowers on the first Island album, Floating World, so you can see their minds were already heading in that direction. However, as the album progresses (and, presumably, we get deeper into the material rattled off in a rush) Havard's psych-prog material becomes more prominent, and then strangely ends up moving into its own direction, where the harsher edges are brushed aside and we end up in a sort of art rock realm. (Jon Field has compared Havard's performance on Have You Ever, the album closer, to David Bowie, and the song does sound a bit like a Jade Warrior spin on Bowie's sound circa Hunky Dory.)

As an album, it's all over the place - but as a collection of offbeat songs with progressive sentiments, it's rather interesting.