RELEASED

Jade Warrior goes wild here! This sax-driven energic hard rock/fusion record is VERY good! When I think about Jade Warrior, peaceful and delicate music comes to mind, thinking about albums like Floating World, Kites and Waves. However, Released is surprisingly hard rock. Yes, there are already some excellent peaceful & delicate passages, but they constitute a small percentage of the album duration. There is an omnipresent Van Der Graaf Generator/Solution similitude.

On "Three-Horned Dragon King", there is a marriage between Led Zeppelin-influended hard rock patterns and sax-driven Van Der Graaf Generator/Solution fusion. As if it was not enough, the rhythms are filled with tribal tam-tams. On "Eyes on you", the rhythmic flute contrasts with the visceral hard rock guitar solos. The pleasant Frippian guitar on "Bride of Summer" is particularly soothing. My favorite track remains "Water Curtain Cave", an absolute jazzy gem recalling Van Der Graaf Generator/Solution on saxes and a very young Robert Wyatt on drums. "Minnamoto's Dream" and "We Have Reason to Believe" will make you remember that Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix have always been a very good source of inspiration. The epic "Barazinbar" starts progressively with tribal tam-tam rhythms, leading to repetitive & reassuring flute & sax notes a la Solution: the pleasant rhythmic guitar riffs and solos remind a bit the ones on the Lenny White's Venusian Summer album; the music gets more & more loaded as the track approaches to its end. The album beautifully ends with the excellent "Yellow Eyes", made of peaceful & delicate flute parts and of acoustic guitars a la Renaissance's "Black flame".