JADE WARRIOR

"Last Autumn's Dream" is the third full-length studio album by UK progressive rock act Jade Warrior. The album was released through Vertigo Records in November 1972. It´s the successor to "Released" from November 1971. This was the last Jade Warrior album to feature the original trio lineup of Tony Duhig (guitars), Jon Field (percussion, flute), and Glyn Havard (bass, vocals). After completing their 1972 American tour, Vertigo Records pulled the plug on Jade Warrior´s recording contract, and as a consequence the band split-up. When they reunited in 1974 it was without Havard, who was told that his services were no longer needed.

But at least "Last Autumn's Dream" sees Jade Warrior go out with a bang in their original incarnation. I´d call "Last Autumn's Dream" the more civilized and mature brother of "Released" (which doesn´t necessarily mean it´s a better album), but of course Jade Warrior are not content with releasing a polished and stylistically consistent release. Therefore "Last Autumn's Dream" is another eclectic progressive rock album from Jade Warrior featuring elements of progressive rock, blues rock, psychedelic rock, folk rock, and jazz-rock. Havard has a pleasant voice and a strong delivery, while the instrumental part of the music is based around Duhig´s guitars and Field´s various percussion instruments and flute playing. There are drums on some tracks when a more rock oriented sound is called for, but the more mellow songs on the album typically only feature percussion and not a full drum kit.

As a result of the many different musical influences "Last Autumn's Dream" is generally a very dynamic release with both soft and mellow parts and louder rock parts but Jade Warrior are a skilled unit and they are fully capable of delivering every part of their music with both passion, skill, and conviction. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

"Released" is the second full-length studio album by UK progressive rock act Jade Warrior. The album was released through Vertigo Records in November 1971. It´s the successor to the eponymously titled debut full-length studio album from May 1971. While the trio lineup of Tony Duhig (guitars), Glyn Havard (bass, vocals), and Jon Field (percussion, congas, flute) is intact on "Released", the album does feature considerable contributions from session musicians Dave Conners (alto & tenor saxophones, flute) and Allan Price (drums). Especially the former has a central role in the soundscape and his presence and playing bring a touch of jazz-rock to Jade Warrior´s sound (opening track "Three Horned Dragon King" is a good example of that).

Compared to the first album "Released" features more "regular" sounding rock/jazz-rock rhythms which is due to the addition of a drummer to the soundscape. The omnipresent and unique use of different types of percussion is still a major part of the band´s sound though ("Three Horned Dragon King" and "Barazinbar" for example features a lot of percussion). stylistically Jade Warrior operate in an area between blues rock, folk rock, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, and jazz-rock. It´s a sound which is hard to describe, but above all they have a highly creative way of writing music and performing it. The many different influences also make "Released" a pretty eclectic listen, and it´s an album which keeps the listener on his/her toes.

"Released" features a raw, organic, and powerful sounding production job. It´s a more hard edged and rock oriented sound production than the more organic and folk rock leaning sound production of the debut album, but it´s suits Jade Warrior well with the added edge. Upon conclusion "Released" is a strong sophomore album release from Jade Warrior. It´s arguably a bit stylistic inconsistent, but I choose to see the positive in that and praise the adventurous nature of Jade Warrior. A band who refused to stay within the confines of one musical genre or style. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

JADE WARRIOR released its first two albums only six months apart in 1971 but managed to create two totally distinct albums that really couldn't be more different from one another at least in the overall JADE WARRIOR canon from the 1970s. The second album RELEASED is sort of the odd album out in the stream of seven albums that the band put out from 71 to 78. While the band featured eye-catching colorful Asian art on its albums which made it quite unique for the time, this second album presented a no nonsense ho hum boring plain album cover that featured a light pink background of all things with only an arrow and a generic band name and title next to it. Add to that it was the band's hardest rocking album with an emphasis on heavier guitar riffs and a greater inclusion of progressive rock while toning down the world ethnic flavors.

The bigger sound experienced on RELEASED is mostly due to the fact that on the self-titled debut it was only the mere trio of Tony Duhig on guitar, Glyn Havard on bass and vocals and Jon Feld playing percussion and flute. On RELEASED the band added Dave Conneers who performed both alto and tenor saxophone parts as well as additional flute. Allan Price was added for extra percussion and although these guys were just technically mere guest musicians, their roles gave the music a fiery jumpstart which elevated JADE WARRIOR into a bonafide rock band. While the debut ventured into a melodic, breezy mix of ethnic, ethereal and ambient sound effects with only occasional references to psychedelic rock and prog, RELEASED was sort of, well, a release of pent up energy that only a few rock performances could unleash.

While the album features heavier rockers more often than anything in the overall JADE WARRIOR canon, RELEASED follows the trend of a rather disjointed array of unrelated tracks that venture into myriad stylistic modes without any care as to how the tracks flowed together, a trait that was common in the early years of JADE WARRIOR before the band settled on the floaty head in the clouds dreamworld that would eventually become the signature sound. The album bursts into a rock frenzy with the opening "Three Horned Dragon" with a strange mix of Santana-esque Afro-Latin drumming rhythms on hyperdrive along with guitar riffs, jazzy saxophone outbursts and a vocal melody that sounds suspiciously close to The Searchers' 1964 hit "Love Potion Number Nine." Add to that a sense of funk guitar and a focus on guitar riffing and soloing and you have a very exotic mix!

The following "Eyes On You" focuses on a groovy repetitive bass line with a Jethro Tull inspired flute accompaniment with the rock guitar adding the extra touches. Another catchy tune showcasing Glyn Harvard's adaptive vocal style. And just when it seems the album is set to rock mode the dreamy folk ballad "Bride Of Summer" disrupts the flow followed by the mellow mid-tempo instrumental funky rocker "Water Curtain Cave" that drifts between jazzy upbeat motifs and slowed down ethereal cool off periods resulting in an odd mix that sounds like Focus meets Out of Focus! The highlight of the album for me is the evocative "Minnamoto's Dream" which features a distinct melodic drive and an interesting backmasking intro and a catchy guitar groove that adds a bit of Japanese ethnic touches including an effective gong. The repetitive bass groove is mesmerizing in the middle which allows the guitar soloing to go nuts! And then the saxophone follows suit. The story is pretty cool too.

The oddball of the album comes from the rock and roll inspired "(We Have) Reason To Believe" which isn't a bad thing in and of itself except for the fact it sounds suspiciously close to Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode." This track would have been better edited out. It wouldn't quite be a JADE WARRIOR album without some moments of jazzy ethnic fusion and that is delivered on RELEASED with the near 15-minute track "Barazinbar" which features an African percussive drive with a groovy repetitive bass, funky guitar and dreamy flute accompaniment. The length of the track creates a hypnotic effect however since the album is rock oriented it allows some guitar soloing. The overall effect is something like Santana jamming with a jazz fusion band like early Return To Forever. The album ends in the dreamy and short "Yellow Eyes" which is more in style to the path JADE WARRIOR would take on future albums except this one features vocals.

To be honest i really didn't like this album the first time as i'd come to it following the later albums like "Floating World" and "Waves" which are more stylistically consistent however i have to admit that the more i've listened to this one the more it's grown on me and the tracks are so well performed that the disjointed nature of the album seems to have dissipated as far as my enjoyment value is concerned. Add to that JADE WARRIOR was unlike any other act that emerged in the world of prog and offered a wide breadth of creative ingenuity on this album even if it stands slightly out of character with the band's overall canon. Call it a temporary experiment and one that was thankfully not followed however i've actually grown to love this one to my own surprise! What's not to love after all. An oddball mix of King Crimson inspired guitar riffs, Jethro Tull-is flute, funk, rock, jazz, prog. Clever compositions too. Yep, it's weaseled its way into my soul and worked up to a four star rating. Sneaky bugger.

For a good long while, Jade Warrior's Island Records-era albums were badly served on CD, with the Elements anthology cramming them all onto two CDs (with, reportedly, edits for running time). Then Eclectic/Esoteric gave them individual releases, and now they have put out Wind Borne - an all-in-one go collection which gives you all four of the Island albums from the group in cardboard sleeves in an attractive clamshell box, along with the customary booklet providing song details and outlining the history of the era.

As is customary for the Cherry Red family of labels, the presentation is decent; the cardboard sleeves, in particular, feel a bit more substantial and less flimsy than the ones used in those "Original Album Classics" sets (fun and convenient though those are), and therefore less like an afterthought.

Though they had significant releases prior to and subsequent to this, I'd argue for the Island Records era being the true peak of Jade Warrior's career, and therefore having it easily available again in one convenient package is a wonderful thing. Esoteric are no slouches about the execution of their boxed sets, and this one is no exception to that.

This compiles into a single release the two albums Jade Warrior recorded in 1973, only for Vertigo to shelve both of them, leading to the band's departure from the label and Glyn Havard's exit from the band, who would continue as a two piece on Island Records.

Eclipse is perhaps the more cohesive and polished of the two, having been essentially finished and a test pressing made before Vertigo pulled the plug. By comparison, Fifth Element is a more chaotic assembly of tracks, consisting of off-cuts from Eclipse, early sketches for the Island Records era, and commercially-leaning art rock numbers, all thrown together in a hurry in a bid to convince Vertigo to change their minds; it somehow works despite this, but is perhaps better regarded as a diverse collection of songs than a fully-formed album. The Esoteric rerelease offers them in a single package with a nicely detailed booklet digging into the chaotic end of the band's Vertigo era.

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.

The 1970s career of Jade Warrior can be divided into two phases - the Vertigo era, when the band were built around the core trio of Tony Duhig, Jon Field, and Glyn Havard, and the Island Records period, when Havard had departed and Duhig and Field took the band in a different direction. For a good long while, however, the last chapter of the Vertigo period had gone unheard, save for a few stray tracks on Vertigo Records promotional compilations. In 1973, Jade Warrior were on the back foot, with relations between Havard on the one hand and Duhig and Field on the other becoming strained.

From the start, both parties had rather distinct musical visions - Duhig and Field being more for the new agey side of the band's sound which would (naturally) come to predominate the Island era, whilst Havard was keen on somewhat more conventional psych/prog material (which, naturally, tended to feature his lead vocals more). If one thing defines the Vertigo era of the band, it's the tension between these styles, and when it worked best, as on the debut, the blend was rather unique; conversely, my feeling that the weakest album of the period was Released stems in part from the way the balance between mellow experimentalism and more straight-ahead rocky nuimbers felt off.

By 1973, the balance was well and truly off. In particular, in late 1972 the band undertook a tour of America (off the back of Barazinbar, the proggiest piece on Released which had ended up becoming an unexpected radio hit over there) which turned into a bit of a farce. Their management had failed to get them the correct work permits and they were forced to cool their heels and delay the start of the tour until the paperwork got sorted out; as the band sat there in a foul mood, existing divisions began to fester.

As Esoteric were preparing their 2023 two-CD reissue of Eclipse and Fifth Element, the two albums Jade Warrior recorded in 1973, Field and Havard were able to touch base and compare notes with the benefit of hindsight, and come to the same conclusion: on these two albums, Glyn was stepping into the breach and filling a gap left when both Tony and Jon were simply too discouraged to contribute as much to the writing as they previously had.

The result is a snapshot of a path not taken, particularly on Eclipse, which the band had recorded after they got home from the US safe and sound. Fifth Element is a more questionable matter, since it was finished off in a hurry after the band went on a brief, abortive tour of Holland and got the news about Vertigo cancelling their contract; one could certainly question whether it really represents Jade Warrior at all, or whether it consists of a mashup of Glyn Havard solo pieces and rough sketches for the Island albums.

Eclipse, though - that's another matter. The band had completed the album to their satisfaction before they left for Holland (setting aside some off-cuts which would later make it onto Fifth Element), a test pressing was made (perhaps representing the ultimate in Jade Warrior rarities), and as mentioned, a few choice songs (Mwenga Sketch and Holy Roller) had even made it onto Vertigo's Suck It And See sampler records. As far as the band were concerned, this was definitely the next Jade Warrior album, and Vertigo agreed... right up to the point when they didn't. Abruptly, behind the scenes machinations at Vertigo saw the release of the album abruptly cancelled, leaving it on a shelf for some 25 years until it saw the light of day in 1998.

This is definitely a Havard-heavy Jade Warrior, with the blend of heavy psych and early prog (I think Glyn must have been listening to a lot of King Crimson's Islands or In the Wake of Poseidon and a good amount of Jethro Tull) which characterised his contributions to the band dialled up. At the same time, Duhig and Field are not absent as such, and flourishes of their New Agey style can be found here and there. Indeed, perhaps because he was more confident taking the lead at this point, Havard's psych numbers aren't quite as strident and brash as they are on Released, leading to a blend which seems to be surprisingly cohesive despite the shift in the internal chemistry of the band.

What would have happened had Eclipse been released on schedule? It's entirely possible we'd have never got the Island albums - or it might have fallen down a commercial hole and the future of the band would have remained exactly the same, it's hard to say. Nonetheless, it's a good thing that it finally saw the light of day. Esoteric's recent 2CD release of this and Fifth Element is perhaps the best one-stop way of getting the full picture of what Jade Warrior were doing in 1973.

Jade Warrior rounded out their Island Records incarnation and went into hiatus with this album, which added Mesoamerican themes to the blend of New Age, world music, and jazz fusion which was the hallmark of this era of the group. This time around things are just a touch more lively than the placid Waves or Kites, but not so much to make Way of the Sun feel like an outright outlier. As with all their Island albums, there's plenty of texture and layers to the music, so whilst it'd certainly fit in that "New Age" category, it's a far cry from the sort of simplistic territory that label sometimes brings to mind.

Again, comparisons to Mike Oldfield can be made, and given that Jon Field offered flute on Tubular Bells that speaks to a certain musical compatibility. Meanwhile, the title track manages to build a bridge between, on one hand, the sound of Santana's more fusion-oriented works and, on the other hand, the early Ozric Tentacles sound. Carnival, on the other hand - by far the liveliest moment on the album (clue's in the name!) relies on Santana much more directly, to a point where I feel I have to dock the album's mark just a little because it feels like Jade Warrior may have been running a bit low on ideas to resort to that sort of thing. Still, it ranks alongside Floating World as among the best of the Island era of the band, and the Island Records period might have been Jade Warrior's most fruitful time.

How much do you need your progressive rock to, y'know, rock? That's the key to whether you'll enjoy Jade Warrior's Kites. Since their debut, there'd always been this softer, more mellow side to the band's sound - and for my money, it's what they do best - and by Kites they had refined that to a fine art, with their Island Records albums all largely focusing on that aspect of their music. Once again, we're in a realm blending New Age music, Asian textures, and the more mellow end of jazz fusion. It's all quite atmospheric, but it's not going to hit the spot if you are after something more lively from your listening.

Waves is the second Jade Warrior to benefit from the new instrumental-focused approach that debuted on Floating World. Just as on that album, we hear a shift away from the sometimes muddled mixture of psych and prog that featured on their early albums and towards a more unambigiously prog-oriented approach. It offers a blend of New Age and jazz fusion sounds arranged across two side-long tracks - like if Mike Oldfield had listened to way more Mahavishnu Orchestra - which is perhaps not surprising when you consider that Jon Field, one half of the band, had contributed flute to Tubular Bells.

The end result sits in the same sort of borderland between ambient new age, and the more fusion end of Canterbury that Robert Wyatt and Brian Eno's work in the era would occupy, and showed that the band's new approach had staying power. As with Floating World, the sound ends up substantially more cohesive than on the band's earliest albums, where the more straight-ahead psychedelic rock compositions always sat a little uneasily next to the more peaceful tunes; as a result, if you're into what they are doing here, you'll be into the entire album, but if you miss some of their old psychedelic crunch you may feel stranded.