FLOATING WORLD

I guess this album is innovative for its time, developing a kind of blues rock approach with world music and new age (both of which genres did not really exist in 1974) so Jade Warrior must be given credit for this ground breaking stylistic innovation.

A major weakness is that whilst aspects of the mix and arrangement are delicate and beautiful and carry you along with their laid back feel, other aspects are jarring - e.g. sudden blasts of percussion or electric guitars which sound nasty and sit too loud and dry in the mix.

In terms of memorability of melodies and harmonies compositionally the music is not so strong with the band relying on a jazzy/jam sort of approach....

A more detailed track by track breakdown:

'Clouds' - opening soundscape but with some quite jarring oriental percussion hits - I guess it sets the scene - 1.5/5

'Mountain of Fruit'... - jazzy with good feel and nice woodwind (flutes) but some of the guitar parts are jarring - nasty sounding electric and overly dry acoustic solo - 3/5

'Waterfall' - pleasant - nice classical guitar and glockenspiel cyclical backdrop but double tracked electric guitars not sounding great destroying the beautiful mood created by the classical/glock - Further in, the piece changes into a more lively hand percussion work out with blasts of flute which meanders a little - 2.5/5

'Red Lotus' - Sort of riffy hard rock with an oriental flavour - quite repetitive - then at the end some floating overdubbed flutes with an ethnic and slightly medieval flavour - 2/5

'Clouds' - floating and ethereal, this is a very effective moody choral mini-track - 4/5

'Rainflower' - again the backdrop over classical and background acoustic guitars is very pleasant but the foreground double tracked electric guitar parts (similar to those in 'Waterfall') are a little OTT - Jade Warrior seem to be going for an ethnic variant of Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross' - not bad though this one overall - 3.5/5

'Easty' - trippy with a memorable hook and a great feel - for me a highlight - some great flute playing too - 4/5

'Monkey Chant' - quite unpleasant and indulgent electric guitar solo - 0/5

'Memories of a Distant Sea' - delicate and beautiful classical guitar and flute - I like this a lot - definitely a highlight - Steve Hackett would take a similar approach with those acoustic guitar and woodwind tracks on his early solo albums - 4/5

'Quba' - quite spare and sweet sounding - pleasant way to round off the album. Towards the end of the track/album there is some very 'spiritual' speech (a final closing prayer?) and a final triumpant reprise of the early percussion hit (referencing back to the first track) - 3.5/5

Overall (by my calculation) - 2.8/5

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