JADE WARRIOR

Not the best place to start with their music genre, but anyway it's a good example of their versatility, along with their tribal-like instrumentation and a good creativity too. Nevertheless you can get also an inkling of their talent here, then their fine anthology "Elements" will be partially in the same vein. Of course they will become more mature after this important experience, but this work is already worth checking out, at least!!

I found their debut to be a bit disjointed and messy. There are some good songs on this album, but there are a lot of mediocre ones as well. As things go, side one (the first five songs) tend to be the best. But I think the album's real low point is "Sundial Song". It starts off pleasant enough, but turns to total crap. To me, I think this was just a mess-up, and their next two albums for Vertigo will be in the same vein, but improvements.

Jade Warrior was one of those marginal bands in the prog genre that somewhat managed to earn a well reserved respect, for becoming such an influential musical force, despite not responding totaly to the typical niches of the most "consistently" prog acts. Their debut namesake album is a bit too far from their finesse and special magic achieved during their Vrigen years, but still is a recording woth trying. Even then it was obvious that their major interest was expanding their musical vision to the sounds of the Far East, India, the Muslim folklore, Northern Africa, in the context of Anglosaxon psychodelia. The presence of electric guitars and several percussive instruments is notable, elaborating tribal ambiences and bluesy atmospheres - and yet, Field's flute passages find their way to shine a light of their own among this paraphernalia. My favourite tracks are both suites, 'Masai Morning' and 'Dragonfly Day', which contain some somber sounds a-la early Floyd and KC, but never been overwhelming... just so subtle, that it makes you wonder if it is real or just dreamt of while you're listening. The same feeling is provoked by the closing number. 'The Traveler' and 'Slow Ride', on the other hand, are much calmer, taking the road of introspective reflectiveness. Ths sound production is not so good, and I feel that the compositional skills of the band members are yet to be polished, despite their undisputed capability to come up with good ideas (specially, ideas about textures and ambiences). Since I can't use a 3 1/2 rating, and 4 stars feels too high, I'll go for the 3 star.

I bought this album as a youngster only on the basis of its sympathetic cover drawings, and quite hardcore looking players in the band photograph. The shopkeeper warned me that "there aren't any melodies, nor maybe even rhythms on this record", and wasn't disappointed. This was my first psychedelic folk-oriented album I ever listened. A year later the shop referred sold away all of their hippie-infested records and focused only to roots music before 1965 influences, and have not visited there since.

"Traveller" opens the LP with quiet acoustic sounds, which soon reveal a wonderful echoed wall of guitars, crowned with a great, solemn solo guitar. This is a quite short track though, but very beautiful. "Masai Morning" has an African theme in it, and it is quite primitive and minimalist song, but I liked it much as it is very unique and full of powerful emotion. "Windweaver" is then more basic psych folk song, but it has again nice amplified, eastern sounding solo guitar in it. It morphs then to the track "Dragonfly Day" which opens with a marvelous wall of acoustic guitars, where the musicians start to paint wonderful patterns with a flute and singing. There are some more slightly uninteresting tunes in the record also, but then the final track "Sundial Song" is again marvelous, opening calmly, and evolving to more aggressive territories and reaching spiritual climax.

Tough the album has some duller songs on it, I like the better ones quite much. I think this is a very well produced and fine demo of their forthcoming release "Released". On that one also the more basic blues rock numbers work better, as there is a bigger band with horns accompanying the group, this album having only three players on it. I have heard both vinyl and remastered CD version of this first album. I think there was something wrong with the sound of the CD, as some louder parts distorted really unnaturally, ruining the listening experience.

I’ve just started discovering Jade Warrior recently based on a recommendation from another proglodyte, and I find them rather appealing even though I was warned this is not a good representative album to start with. But when discovering new bands in- depth I like to start at the beginning to get a better sense of the band’s roots and how they progressed (or didn’t, as the case may be).

These guys are pretty unusual overall, although there are several fairly obvious influences. The most prominent is seventies Jethro Tull, kind of unavoidable considering there’s only three guys in the band, one of them plays the flute, and another (Glyn Havard) has passingly similar vocals to Ian Anderson. Tull also experimented a bit with odd rhythms, blunt percussion, and disjointed arrangements on some of their mid-seventies work as well, but nowhere near to the extent do these guys. The percussion comes in the form of various Eastern and Latin hand drums and what I think are bells or some sort of tinny hand implements. On most tracks the combination of sounds atop an overall jazz-inspired rhythm works pretty well, although I’m not sure the vocals are really necessary for the most part. The lyrics are spacey and more poetic than concrete in an artsy way that feels contrived much of the time, particularly on the lengthy, spiritual, and otherwise very engaging “Dragonfly Day”.

This CD release seems to have something wrong with the mix, as the flow across the channels is choppy and awkward, especially at the beginning of the album. Otherwise the sound is quite good for the period.

The relative inexperience of these three guys working together and trying to find their sound is apparent in places: on “Petunia” the band varies between a kind of fuzzed-psych guitar sound and a Bad Company-like blues beat that doesn’t quite gel; and on “Telephone Girl” the fuzz guitar with Latin rhythms sounds more like a self-indulgent studio jam session than a deliberate composition.

But overall this is a pretty engaging album, and is well worth the investment of time and money to check out. Once you get past the first three Tullish tracks, the band does a great job of experimenting with many different percussive flavors and layered, multi-disciplined arrangements. This kind of eclectic music could never find a major label today to invest in them, which of course is one of the main problems with the current music industry. Bands like Jade Warrior, when given time to develop a groove, are important to the creative process that makes progressive music such a joy to experience.

So even though I’m only going to give this debut three stars, the fresh approach sets the stage for a string of much stronger releases that would cement these guys firmly in the role of favored-sons of the progressive scene. Like I was warned, this is not the best place to start with the band, but if you listen to this and then graduate to their string of quite beautiful mid-seventies recordings, you will witness the evolution of a sound that is both hard to categorize, and worth seeking out for that very reason.

peace

Jade Warrior is the selftitled debut studio album from British psychadelic rock act Jade Warrior. This is not a band I had heard about before reading a review on PA, but I´m very greatful that I read that review and took the time to listen to this album because it´s really unique and different from what I usually listen to.

What you notice first when listening to this album is the lack of a real drummer. Every rythm on this album is created by all sorts of percussion. It´s a real treat IMO and one of the biggests assets in Jade Warrior´s music. The music seems very organic with lots of acoustic guitar and bass, the aformentioned percussion and lots of flute. There are occasional electric guitar parts, but the music is mostly acoustic. The backbone in most songs is simple blues rock and the vocals are also mostly blues rock influenced. There are several more mellow sections throughout the album though and the flute creates a folky mood that leads my thoughts toward early Jethro Tull. In fact I´m sure fans of early Tull will love this album.

Most songs are pretty simple yet greatly enjoyable and I´m left with a big smile on my face after listening to songs like Petunia and Psychiatric Sergeant. Masai Morning and Dragonfly Day is a bit longer than the other songs on the album and the structure of those songs can be considered somewhat progressive.

The musicianship is excellent. I really enjoy the many acoustic blues rock riffs that are the backbone of the songs. Very inventive. The percussion parts from Jon Field needs to be mentioned as well as they are varied and intriguing all the way through the albums playing time. The flute which is also played by Jon Field is also very enjoyable.

The production is excellent. Very organic and pleasant. I can feel my body vibrate with each percussion hit if I turn up the volume on my stereo.

I´m so happy after listening to Jade Warrior. It´s just the kind of album that´s designed to make you happy. I´m also very intrigued by the fact that this is a three man band without a real drummer who is able to create such great music. This is a very deserved 4 star rating and I can´t wait to discover the rest of Jade Warrior´s discography.

A prenormal band!

Here we have the self-titled debut album from Jade Warrior, a unique British band from the 70's that mixed the Rock music of the times with New-Age, Jazz and World-Music influences. The latter are here predominately Latin despite the strongly Asian aesthetic of the cover art sleeve. The music here is occasionally close in nature to that of Santana; bluesy and jazzy guitar-based Rock with lots of Latin percussions. But also some African and Asian sounds and rhythms might be detected and some unique sounds are created. The guitar sound on opener The Traveller, for example, is very distinctive. The first side of the album is promising and it points toward what they would do better on later albums such as Last Autumn's Dream and Floating World. A Prenormal Day At Brighton is a more conventional song with Jethro Tull-like flutes featuring the line "I would like to see some more, but I'm really not sure" (which nicely sums up my reflections after hearing this album). The strongly percussive Masai Morning is a showcase for the group's experimental inclinations and also points towards future similar experiments. Here they sound quite similar to Black Widow on their debut album.

The second half of the album is significantly less interesting, however. Here they seem content to play more conventional Santana-like Jazz-Rock of the kind that would make up the bulk of the disappointing second Jade Warrior album, Released. I think that it is fair to calls this music Proto-Prog rather than anything else as it has a 60's feel to it.

A promising but somewhat premature debut from Jade Warrior. They would do better things later on.

By 1971 prog had made it big, to the point where bands were already emerging that showed a heavy influence from the greats of the genre. Jade Warrior was not such a band; from their debut onwards, they would showcase a wonderfully unique sound, taking hard psychedelic rock as the basis and adding a bit of flute, a few jazz elements, and musical ideas sourced from all over the world, making this an early "world music" release - as well as, at points, a early "new age" release with its tranquil, spacey textures.

That said, the album is rather uneven - the least interesting track is probably Psychiatric Sergeant, which is mainly a straight-ahead hard psych song with flute, reminiscent at points of early Jethro Tull. Where the band really shines is where they avoid conventional song structures in favour of creating shimmering, gorgeous walls of sound which the listener can lose themselves in, which they do manage to achieve for most of the album. So, not a perfect album, but definitely a strong debut from a band well worth exploring.

The seeds of JADE WARRIOR were planted all the way back in the early 60s when Jon Field and Tony Duhig met while working in a factory and discovered they had a mutual interest in jazz and world ethnic music. After several years and experimenting with many different instruments they created a few bands and then moved on and eventually recorded a somewhat popular album under the July moniker. Finally in the year 1970, after adding Glyn Harvard on bass and vocals, John Field who would handle flutes and percussion along with Tony Duhig who handled guitars would buck the trends of the day and create a totally new sort of progressive rock that took ethnic influences in a totally new direction. The newly formed band quickly garnered enough attention to instantly score a deal with Vertigo Records.

The eponymous debut album by JADE WARRIOR pretty much sets a precedent of their entire career, one which presents the listener with a strange plethora of musical ideas often not gelling together in the most cohesive manner but more often than not leaving the listener entertained while always begging the question of "why would they do it like that?" Immediately on the first track this band sets itself apart from the pack. It begins with a nice clean and slow contemplative guitar part that becomes accompanied by a flute and then when the congas kick in throw you off totally. The term JADE WARRIOR supposedly has a Japanese samurai connection and the music does seem to have an Eastern meets Western feel with African and Latin vibes thrown in for good measure. They also utilized a unique combination of blues rock with Santana like percussion instead of traditional blues rock percussion.

After a soft and sweet opening track, it's quite the old switcheroo when on the second track "A Prenormal Day In Brighton" it delves into the 60s psychedelic blues rock scene creating a stark contrast between the first track. As the album continues the songs generally fall into two camps. One is the contemplative mellow and clean tracks that conjure up the exotic ethnic influences infused with a spacier acoustic type of freak folk and the more heavy psych bluesy hard rockers. The down side is that these tracks don't quite gel together as seamlessly as they probably should but on the other hand all of these tracks, no matter how stilted in their juxtapositions are quite enjoyable. It's not like the two styles even alternate. For the most part the slower tracks proceed up to "Telephone Girl" which begins the heavier hard psych rock style with the second track being the exception in the flow of things.

JADE WARRIOR has always been an underdog of sort in the prog world most likely due to their inability to create well flowing deliveries of their music to create a totally satisfying album experience without any stilted feel but i have to admit that i really like many of their albums and this debut release is the perfect place to start as it in a nutshell sums up what JADE WARRIOR's musical vision was from the start. While the next couple of albums focus on the heavy blues rock aspect of their music and beginning with "Floating World" they went for the spacier folky ethnic sounds, this debut has a mixture of both styles sometimes playing hand in hand but most of the time not. One of the most unique albums in 1971 that may not be an all time classic but one that is consistent in quality if not perfectly laid out in presentation.

Jade Warrior ' st (1971)

One of progressive rock's most remarkable debut albums. Jade Warrior plays nomadic heavy psych with lots of Asian traditional influences (flute, percussions, harmonies). On their debut album I find their mixture of fuzzed up rock and world music folk most appealing. The record sounds inspired, even to the point of not finishing up compositions because of the next beautiful idea. This would bother me on other records, but world music is supposed to be different from western pop ' especially in songs structure. The heavy fuzz guitar sounds a bit too distorted, but it adds to the 'obscure record' feel. The idea behind how the band switches between heavy psych, early Crimsonian balladry and traditional Asian music is hard to grasp, which adds to the atmosphere of listening to an creative outburst of talented musicians. I wouldn't be at all surprised if King Crimson also got some ideas from this record for their gentler passages on 'Larks Tongues in Aspic'.

On the follow-up record 'Released' (1971) Jade Warrior would focus on their brand of Asian folk infused (jazz)rock, before setting course for their trademark 'new age prog' sound. Lovers of that later sound will find this album a bit harsh, but for me 'Jade Warrior' (1971) represents a perfect balance between harmonic beauty, raw power, magical abstraction and a rare sense of originality.

While the term 'influential' is often code for 'commercial flop that has gained some notoriety with the passage of time', in the case of JADE WARRIOR the acclaim is well earned and deserved. They may be best remembered for their time on Island Records between 1974 and 1978, in which they pioneered a bewitching fusion of world, ambient and new age when all were the Jane Does of popular music. Before this near brush with non-anonymity, they released three albums on Vertigo which have justly attracted a cult of prog fans, even if they only scored the record deal as a 'throw in' along with the band that the label really wanted to sign.

Both Tony Duhig (guitar) and Jon Field (percussion, flute) had known each other for the better part of a decade and worked with other future luminaries like Tom Newman and in pop and psych bands of the 1960s, which allows even their Jade Warrior debut to sidestep accusations of immaturity. Most of what would form the core of their mid 1970s accomplishments was already in evidence here, from the fascination with world music to the appreciation for pastoral folk to a voyeuristic tendency to shock the listener with crude transitions. Apart from the presence of vocalist/bassist Glyn Havard, what's different here, and what was largely bled out by the time the Vertigo had subsided, was a predilection for blues and rock of their day and of by then bygone days. How well they balanced these disparate influences largely dictates my evaluation of this period. In the case of this inaugural work, they did rather well.

Skirting the clear comparisons to what JETHRO TULL and KING CRIMSON were doing at the time, I also note a kinship with some of the early proto prog, at times veering close to a SPRING with far better musicianship and no mellotrons. The perceived whimsy of some of the lyrics and some of the heavier guitar work approximate some of the early Canterbury like EGG. Not surprisingly, I'm a bigger fan of the more pastoral Crimson oriented work like 'The Traveller', 'Windweaver', and 'Dragonfly Day', and even more so the sublime closer 'Sundial Song' with a nod to PETER GREEN's FLEETWOOD MAC in Duhig's liquid lead guitar. Still, if I had to pick a single highlight, it would be the stunning 'Masai Morning', with three equally 'hairs on end' chapters that refute any notion that the Warrior came at its cosmopolitan pretensions dishonorably and should therefore logically choose to die on its sword.

Even the plod rockers plod and rock with dignity and a stylish savvy, spruced up as they are by playful flute, percussions (no drums are credited here) and lead guitar. The lyrics may not be the most inspired, but even on the weakest number, 'Telephone Girl', they are more naive than offensive. My favorite of the up-tempo numbers is 'Psychiatric Sergeant' but they all integrate well into the band's at times schizophrenic vision.

I would not have believed it when I was done hearing and reviewing the Island anthology, but I now can state with the minimal authority vested in me that this inaugural release is a mighty fine way to begin your exploration of a band, and album, that fully earns its cachet.