CHICK COREA: RETURN TO FOREVER

I received this album from a good friend of mine for my eighteenth birthday (about a month ago) and have listened to it enough so I don't think my opinion will change much in the near future. I actually really did like this album, especially since I've been getting into the Chick Corea Elektric Band lately (whom I get to see in concert in a few days) among other fusion artists. It really was a great debut album for Return to Forever. It seems that Corea's main goal in this album was to prove to the world he could produce incredible music without playing along side Miles Davis in Bitches Brew, hence it appears on the album that the "artist" is "Chick Corea" as that's how jazz artists produce albums. The band's later albums evolved to the band's name as the "artist" which in a sense that could be symbolic for the progression of the band as more jazz oriented to become more prog rock oriented. The music in this is quite reminiscent of Bitches Brew, which isn't even progressive, it's just... somewhat free form jazz fusion in a sense, or at least to my sketchy understanding of the genre. While I do enjoy listening to this album I don't see how it has much to do with progressive rock, even in a fusion sense, or at least compared to Return to Forever's later albums such as Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy or Romantic Warrior. While this is indeed a great album, I feel that it is by no means essential to any progressive music collector nor an accurate representation of progressive fusion sub-genre. I would however strongly recommend this album mainly for lovers of fusion music abroad, especially fans of Chick Corea.