LAST AUTUMN'S DREAM

"Last Autumn's Dream" is their definitive effort, regarding of their maturity and versatility as well, even though it stands alone as one of the best "Proto-progressive works" of the seventies, in the UK. Their line-up was made with a five piece, including Alan Price on drums and Dave Duhig on guitar, but unlike its predecessor. This album was more in the vein of their debut album, along with some remarkable tunes such as "Lady of the Lake", "Winter's Tale" and "May Queen" - whose composition combines such an Oriental music stuff, within a rock apparatus.

Recommended as an original work, perhaps a bit simplistic, but always fresh!!

I do not like the irritating rhythmic guitar sound: it is almost grunge sometimes. The tracks often start smoothly, then you feel that the intensity increases; it becomes improvised garage hard rock a la Jimi Hendrix with an irritating grunge guitar sound. Fortunately, there are some interesting mellow & peaceful bits.

I appreciate the very smooth, delicate and graceful oriental influences like on the Kites, Waves and Floating World albums, which are also quite more peaceful. The problem here is that I find Last Automn's too unequal, gross and brutal.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Final album for Vertigo, and the best one, in my book. I never really thought the early JADE WARRIOR for Vertigo as a prog rock band. More like a varied rock band that included hard rock, jazz, folk, and ethnic influences. There are actually quite a few straightforward songs that I don't really feel comfortable call prog. There are some more adventurous numbers as well. I don't really call myself a big JADE WARRIOR fan, and I don't feel the need to have every album they did, but this is actually a quite decent album.

Obviously, the band members had vastly differing tastes, since the songs here range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Once I heard their subsequent release, Floating World, it became apparent where the real talent was. The recent remastered releases sound wonderful; the Line label reissues were muddy-sounding. Program in the great songs, and pretend the crappy ones never existed. The same goes for their first two albums, and for Eclipse and Fifth Element.

This 3rd release would prove to be JADE WARRIOR's last on the Vertigo label and IMHO one of their best overall albums. JADE WARRIOR's progressive leanings clearly come from their original genre fusions of rock and world... clearly in their approach. JADE WARRIOR blend Jon Field's flute with Tony Duhig's non- standard guitar tunings along with interesting percussion (congas, bells.) elements resonating a highly crafted and original sound. "Last Autumn's Dream" is an album that utilizes experimentation, a touch of fusion, traditional Japanese sounds, folk, jazz and yes even progressive rock to its advantages. Just as JADE WARRIOR are content to play in the tranquil space nebula they also are comfortable on the same album rocking out. This is a great album and one that I play rather frequently.

The Jade Warrior of Last Autumn's Dream is in general a different beast from the New Age/World Music pioneer that it would soon become. To call this work eclectic is to give it too much credit, for it is basically disjointed and imbalanced (which is rather surprising considering that this is the group's third album). Ultimately this record is most notable for some early, if frequently heavy-handed, attempts at the fusion of contrasting musical traditions.

At its best, though, the music of Tony Duhig and Jon Field (this was bassist Glyn Harvard's swan song) can be quite engaging. A Winter's Tale is a hippy campfire song, a sort of union between the Kinks and the earliest Yes material. And the instrumental Dark River has a mournful solo from Field (on some wind instrument I can't identify) that is a real sign of the direction that they would triumphantly embark upon in the future. With its shifting moods and arresting ethnic experimentation, it is by far the most interesting track here.

Some of the pieces are interesing without working that well. Lady Of The Lake uses the melodic inflections of traditional Chinese music, but the ethnic instruments sit uncomfortably alongside the organ washes. May Queen too is a match of ethnic percussion and roots rock, evolving into something resembling jazz-funk, before first flutes, then vibes, then Santana-like guitar lead conclude the piece. The final track Borne On The Solar Wind does echo the melody of A Winter's Tale, but it's too little, too late in terms of giving this album a semblance of cohesion.

Because when this album is bad, it can really be quite unlistenable. Snake is a wah-wah heavy piece .. a surprising early excusion into the unpleasant art of interminable noodling at high speed and volume, while Joanne and Demon Trucker are really poor attempts at a hard rock singles, with fat doses of wah-wah thrown around indiscriminately. These sort of Doobie Brothers-influenced tracks really don't work well at all. As for the instrumental Obedience it starts off well enough but the ethnic percussion soon disappears under the wall of sound created by jarring guitars.

Even at its best, Jade Warrior is not really my cup of tea. And this album isn't Jade Warrior at its best. ... 42% on the MPV scale

The last of the first

Jade Warrior is a unique and interesting British band that started out in the early 70's. Their self-titled debut album had shown some promise but it was still somewhat immature and their second album was a real plodder filled with anonymous and, in my opinion, rather dull Santana-like Latin Jazz-Rock. Here, however, on the group's third album, it all came together for them for the first time. Last Autumn's Dream was in many ways Jade Warrior's peak of the early part of the band's career. It was with this album that they finally managed to pull off what they had only attempted before. The development of their own early sound culminated here and they somehow realized their own musical identity. They also achieved a good balance in terms of different moods, tempos and levels of intensity that makes for a varied yet cohesive album that remains interesting till the end. There are a couple of mistakes though and Joanne and Demon Trucker are the two I'm primarily thinking of here. These two tracks are rather clumsy Hard Rock numbers with lyrics full of clichés. Still, they are not worse than the worst songs from the previous two albums and besides they are short and far enough apart not to bring the album down as a whole.

Admittedly, some parts of this album are a bit raw and the production is not the best in comparison with subsequent albums. But on the quieter moments the sound is pure and points towards what they would do on their next album, Floating World. For that next album, Jade Warrior turned away somewhat from the eclectic and experimental 70's Rock found here and took on more of a New-Age and World-Music approach. The World-Music influences had been present in the band's sound from the start however, and on this album these influences rub shoulders with Jazz, Blues and guitar-based Psychedelic Rock influences to make an appealing mixture. Lots of nice flutes and percussions mixed with more traditional Rock elements to great effect.

If you are looking to investigate Jade Warrior, Last Autumn's Dream is a good place to start and certainly the best of their early period (first three albums).

Improving somewhat from Released, which explored the hard rock side of Jade Warrior in what I thought wasn't a very successful way, Last Autumn's Dream turns its attention to the band's more tranquil aspects, with the notable exceptions of Joanne and (especially) Demon Trucker. The band still haven't quite realised that they're just not cut out for rocking out, but at least on this album the ethereal walls of sound from the debut begin to make a return, and the distinctive, distorted wail of Tony Duhig's guitar is always a joy to hear. It doesn't quite recapture the best aspects of the debut, but it makes up a lot of the lost ground. A healthy four stars seems appropriate stars (ranking the debut as four and a half and Released as three and a half).

Jade Warrior was one of those names I stumbled across while leafing through the annals of progressive rock. As I understand, they married far eastern musical sounds with western rock, and their first album solidly established what they were about. The second album did not come off so well, but their third album, "Last Autumn's Dream" managed to come close to their debut, possibly surpassing it depending on whom you ask. This I gathered from the Wiki article and some of the reviews here.

Taking a chance, I ordered the third album without much prior inspection of the music. "A Winter's Tale" sounds quite typical of the day with lots of la-la-las and an English view of a warm fire in the fireplace. There is a kind of Japanese feel to some of the guitar which doesn't sound forced or intrusive. Interesting that they chose to start the album with a laid back song that is one of only three to clear five minutes.

Beginning with a wild guitar solo, "Snake" sounds more exciting with its heavy fuzz-toned, sidewinder bass line. I can picture a viper swishing its coils left and right across the sand. The heavy sound makes Jade Warrior sound closer to proto-metal at times. The music switches style and atmosphere near the end, and there's an eerie flute contribution, but this interesting turn in the music serves only as an outro. Too bad they didn't develop it further. In a way it reminds me a little of "Famine" on the Opeth album "Heritage" except that the Opeth song is one of my favourite Opeth songs and this one here is just kind of interesting. Needs more work.

"Dark River" is where the far eastern influence really starts to show with a flute solo that conjures up images of ninja running stealthily along a river bank at night. The entrancing drumming reminds me of Ron Bushy's solo on Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida". A plunky guitar takes over while the suspenseful flute continues, and then once more the guitar and drums trade places. This certainly is an atmosphere-establishing piece that seems to marry a Japanese ninja movie soundtrack with an Iron Butterfly-influenced tribal drumming rhythm.

"Joanne" seems to be a typical rock number that might have emerged from the southern States somewhere. "Joanne, we're gonna get loaded / Joanne, know what I mean." I can't say the lyrics are particularly good. I might be thrilled about the wild heavy psych guitar solo if this was 1969 but as it is there's not much to praise except that it might be the best part of the song.

"Obedience" has my attention with some traditional Japanese percussion backing more fuzz-toned guitar. This sounds like another piece of music that could have been part of something bigger and grander. A jangling, chiming guitar sound joins along with some warm background instrumentation. And then all fades out. Why didn't they take this further and turn into some wonderful instrumental epic?

The Japanese-sounding guitar plucks over an gentle guitar while flute plays soft notes for "Morning Hymn". This is a gentle number for the awakening sleepy head and the glow of sunbeams across flower blossoms. Not particularly exciting but this is where the band sound like they are on to something different from their peers.

There's more traditional-sounding Japanese percussion and some almost down-home groovy guitar before one guitar introduces a Byrds-like riff. The music then goes back to a laid back groove as the vocals tell us about the "May Queen". The flute creeps in like ripples around a stone. Then we get more of the psychedelic guitar. This is a song that you might find either rather interesting or, if you don't like the scratchy guitar, a bit of a sore spot. They get points for the honest effort at blending styles. Perhaps if they'd kept this up they might have really nailed it on a fourth or fifth album of this line-up.

And the we get a drum intro that sounds like it inspired Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog" while Mungo Jerry's cousin comes in with a typical seventies banana-munching beat. I can just see the big furry sideburns. "Demon Trucker"? With this one and "Joanne" it's hard to tell if these guys were really all that serious about being progressive. Perhaps they still wanted the rock crowd-pleasing tunes to offset the mellow, eastern-flavoured tunes.

"Lady of the Lake" and "Borne to the Solar Wind" take us out with those Japanese-inspired musical stylings. These slower parts with gentle electric guitar, traditional percussion, and flute are for me the most enjoyable parts of the album. I don't know why they split the music into two tracks because "Borne to the Solar Wind" is essentially an instrumental continuation of the music of "Lady of the Lake".

Each time I listen to this album I feel like this is either a band in transition or a band who was trying to cross psychedelic music with eastern-inspired mellow electric rock but still hadn't found the exact formula. For the most part I think the tracks have a lot of good aspects but I am left with the feeling that more effort should have been made toward creating something really memorable. Jade Warrior are too timid about utilizing their uniqueness to its full potential. I am curious now if I shouldn't look at their later albums when Jade Warrior was writing world music or their debut which might have better captured their initial intent. Based on the reviews, it would appear that the band went more for the world music feel that they did quite well here on "Last Autumn's Dream" and dropped the psychedelic space rock sound. They really could have pulled it off nicely, marrying the two styles, with a bit more adventurousness.

I hesitate to call it "good but not essential" but it's better than "Collectors/fans" only. Perhaps a 2.5 star rating of "it has potential" would be more accurate. So, rounded up to three stars then.

Jade Warrior - Last Autumn's Dream (1972)

I was struck with awe by the Akarma vinyl reprint of Jade Warrior's debut album. I finally found my copy of their third album, which represents a continuation in style. Empty drawing board progressive rock heavily influenced by eastern (Japanese) folk influences. As if famous film director Akira Kurawasa had formed a rockband. The second album focused (at times) unsuccessfully on the rock / heavy psych side of the band.

It's wonderful to listen to a band that so full of fresh ideas that it almost forgets to finish it songs. The music full of chunky clean guitars, wild fuzz guitars, flute orchestrations, Asian percussion and some mildly psychedelic vocals. Sometimes is feels like listening to a small traditional Japanese orchestra, with even the electric guitar tuning in, in that ethereal sound. It feels like listening to a scene in a movie. The opening song reminds me of the better King Crimson ballads, like Candance and Cascade. Plain beauty. Joanne is wildly psychedelic rock track. Obedience another scenic fuzz guitar soundscape that reminds me a bit of the opening of Larks Tongues. The ending of the album is another symphonic folk highlight of the band's career. A bit like the best parts of Embryo's folk-styled albums.

This music is guided imagination. Dreaming away to far away lands and stories. Progressive rock listeners that can't appreciate a lack of song structure will definitely hit a wall here, but for adventurous listeners this record must surely hit a chord. I love this record about as much as the debut, so another five star rating for this one.

For their final offering on Vertigo, JADE WARRIOR pulled out all the stops by expanding their instrumental palette and inviting Tony Duhig's brother David to play rather accomplished guitar on 2 tracks. While the first offering juxtaposed creative rockers and soothing ballads, and the second favored heavier rock and extended jazzy excursions, "Last Autumn's Dream" strikes a middle ground somewhere between KING CRIMSON'S "Islands" and, I don't know, any number of early 1970s garage bands. Luckily in this case there is more of the former, even if whatever jazz was uncovered on "Released" is now shrouded in an ambient haze.

Once you get past the base instincts of "Snake", "Joanne" and "Demon Trucker" and accept that JADE WARRIOR needed to jettison them to attain any modest level of commercial success - which believe me is all they did attain - you can focus on beauties like "A Winter's Tale" and the superb closers "Lady of the Lake" and "Borne on to the Solar Wind", which play to the band's strengths in all aspects. "Morning Hymn" is either GENESIS inspired, or STEVE HACKETT inspiring, or perhaps both. "May Queen" best bridges the rock, folk, pop and jazz boundaries, and sounds little like anything they have done before or since, to their credit.

Oddly, the Island years of 1974-1978 seem to be more of a direct consequence of at least some aspects of "Released" rather than "Last Autumn's Dream", perhaps due to the fact that there were still 2 years left before the band jumped labels. Two releases would have filled that interim if the band had had its way, but those albums did not surface in any form until the late 1990s. JADE WARRIOR may not be perfect but they seem to have been able to spawn a small but ardent audience who wanted, and still want, to dream along with them.