ECLIPSE

I can see why this effort was shelved at the time it was recorded. There are a few decent tracks, so buy it if you can find an inexpensive copy. Intriguing, since it's the missing link (along with "Fifth Element") between "Last Autumn's Dream" and "Floating World". Very little of it sounds like "Floating World", though. To be honest, this album and "Fifth Element" seem to harken back to the most basic type of rock material that appeared on the first three albums.

If you like to follow the musical evolvement of this band, you should place this album behind "Last Autumn's Dream" in their discography, as it was recorded originally after that release. I'm more fond of the material this band did before year 1974, when they moved to Island label and started to do long instrumental suites (though they are quite nice too). I had heard some of these songs from the "Reflections" compilation, which is now quite futile album as this album is posthumously completely released.

The record opens hazily with "English Morning", which is a very good classic psych folk performance. I really appreciate like the delicate manner how these guys manage to paint feelings with their instruments, being a true album highlight. "Sanga" is then a happy instrumental number with some African drumming, fuzzy guitars and jazzy flutes. "Too Many Heroes" is a decent bluesy rock song, and "Song for A Soldier" is psychedelic some sort of anti-war song, quite interesting and different. There are some personal rhythm patterns done with bells on it, and they are contrasted with very raw rock parts. "Maenga Sketch" has more cool surrealistic sound walls on its beginning, from where a long jam sequence emerges. This too is fun to listen, but there's bit pointless playing going on also I fear, and the jams on "Released" worked much better in my opinion. I also must admit that "Holy Roller" was not a very good track. Luckily the final long song "House of Dreams" is again very good, slow and hypnotic classic Jade Warrior performance.

There are lots of nice elements and good playing to be heard on this album, but it's not as good as the other early 1970's recordings I believe. This album is mostly for the fans of the band, but not possibly poor introduction to the sound of this group either.

Vertigo records never really wanted JADE WARRIOR in the first place, and when the group parted company with their indifferent management, they had nobody stopping the even more apathetic label from wielding the axe. Somehow, before the bad news struck, the trio had laid down tracks for what they hoped would be a double album. That's the good news; the bad news is that, though Vertigo may have included a few of those tracks on promotional disks around that time, the albums 'Eclipse' and 'Fifth Element' did not see any form of release until 1998. As a potential link between the Vertigo and Island years, these recordings must have been long sought after by early fans for the better part of a quarter century. Since they ended up as 2 separate Repertoire offerings, I will discuss them individually, with 'Eclipse' first.

Neither of the temporally adjacent 'Last Autumn's Dream' and 'Floating World' really offer many hints as to the music on 'Eclipse' which is a difficult unfocused mix of heavy prog with snippets of Canterbury-ish psychedelia. But Jade Warrior has habituated us to marked changes within and between albums. The problem this time is quality. The playing is at times wonderful but it can't compensate for the empty director/conductor's chair. This isn't free flow enough to be called jazz in the way that 'Barazinbar' was and the hard rock elements aren't as succinct as on their debut. The worst aspects of the prior 2 albums collide head on here, but those very traits might actually appeal to some more free thinking listeners, though I still find it hard to imagine that anybody would prefer it to, say, that seminal first album. And if you are looking for nods to the upcoming landmark Island albums, you won't find any more here than on the prior works, with the possible exception of the closing number.

We begin on a high of sorts, with the quintessentially English 'English morning' encapsulating all that a travelling musician might miss from his homeland, even in the midst of Labor unrest and the predictably bone chilling climate. 'Sanga' offers some Latin inspired flute and rhythms, while the riff alone on 'Too Many Heroes' might be the most memorable on the whole effort. Tony Duhig so struts his technical mastery that one wonders why brother David was needed at all. Unfortunately, the party serenades itself off a cliff from here, with the dire 'Soldier Song' and 'Holy Roller' sandwiched around the only slightly better 'Mwenga Sketch', mostly better because after all that English abandon a trip to the Congo, no matter how dangerous, must be an improvement. Barely. Luckily they save the best for last, a hypnotic DEAD CAN DANCE inspiring dirge 'House of Dreams' that thrives through OCD the way the others die by ADD.

Whether Vertigo even heard 'Eclipse' before sweeping Duhig and Field aside is unclear, but, if they hadn't, it's doubtful that even special lenses would have altered their perception.

This album wasn't released till much later but it was recorded in 1973, thus it recalls the CLASSIC Jade Warrior sound because it is.

Track 1 is a nice stripped down ballad like Yellow Eyes and Travelling, though mediocre in comparison.

Track 2 is a vigorous world music workout with great percussion work as always.

Track 3 is an anti war harder song. I've never enjoyed Jade Warriors rockin' moments, it's why I can't give them a five stars. Anyways this one is not as offensive as the second track of side b from Released.

Track 4 is kind of like track 3 and 2 put together. Mostly instrumental but with pieces of not so good vocals (the melody is bad when they are singing it isn't that Glyn Harvard is a bad singer)

Track 5 opens with spacey space stuff then it breaks into a furious percussion driving workout with screaming guitar. For the first time on this album the music feels inspired and heads in the right direction. After about 1-2 minutes a muted guitar playing chords introduces a pleasant woodwind section. Before the song can drag bass drags the song to new pastures. The song then ends following a short percussion solo introducing the finishing move, a full band closer.

Track 6 is rock n roll complete with the voice and lyrics including baby. This song is rather dated and I dislike it.

Track 7 starts with calm percussion and is joined by great vocals harkening back to Dragonfly Day. The song heads to an intense sound with powerful guitar lead and aggressive drumming. The song then concludes on a fade out and the album is done.

Overall this albums short songs range from bad to okay, thus the lower review then their earlier albums which had some great short songs and great longer songs. Instead, Eclipse best moments are solely vested in the longest songs while the short throwaway tracks are all of them.

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.