Product Description

By the time Return to Forever's ROMANTIC WARRIOR lineup coalesced, the group was very much a partnership between all four members. By 1976, with increased reliance on Corea's banks of analogue synthesizers and Al Dimeola's searing electricguitar, the quartet had arrived at a musical crossroads that was more closely aligned with "progressive" ensembles of the day like Hands or Happy The Man than with real rockers orjazzmen. This undefined netherworld marked the point of delineation between "jazz-rock" a la '70s Miles and the less definable "fusion".
The compositions, contributed by all four members, feature death-defying time changes and fleet-fingered riffs that would mark the downfall of lesser men. The facility displayed by Corea, DiMeola, and bassist Stanley Clarke is astounding, as they rip through counterpoint and unison lines, spitting out sixteenth-notes like bubblegum. Drummer Lenny White is a polyrhythmic wonder, making all the bizarre, unconventional shifts sound completely organic. As on his '70s solo albums, DiMeola offers the liquid, rapid-fire solos that would inspire a generation of fusion guitarists, while Corea's nimble lead synthesizer work gives Mahavishnu-era Jan Hammer (obviously an inspiration) a run for his money.

Track Listing

1. Medieval Overture
2. Sorceress
3. Romantic Warrior
4. Majestic Dance
5. Magician
6. Duel Of The Jester And The Tyrant

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32277 in Music
• Released on: 1999-10-18
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Wonderfully Inventive Jazz!
I reviewed this album separately as the work of 'Return To Forever' but have just noticed that Amazon has listed it under Chick Corea. The musicianship on this excellent album is outstanding. All 6 tracks are fabulous (two, including the title track, are over 10 minutes long) and the whole album is a great listening experience (the sound quality is superb). There is a magical mix of styles and a broad range of instruments used here - I found the whole album really impressive. Highly recommended.

They Don't Make 'Em Like This Anymore (shame)!
I recently reacquired this little 70s jazz fusion gem to replace a battered old tape copy, and boy, was it worth it! All cleaned up and remastered, it sounds fresher and more dynamic than ever.
Firstly, it has to be said that these guys all possessed impecable Jazz credentials, and were numbered among the finest players on the planet in their day, in any musical genre, and the level of musicianship on this album remains staggering despite the intervening 30 years. Corea's considerable compositional and playing skills are well to the fore, as the group engages with and then masters all manner of rock styles, from prog thru psych to folk. Where the Mahavishnu Orch was more concerned with overwhelming power and spectacle, RTF were much more concerned with the music itself, and the tracks are all unfailingly melodic and inventive.
Whether on the fluid funk of "Sorceress", the prog inspired title track, the dark strangeness of "Magician", or the upbeat sparkle of "Majestic Dance", Corea's percussive piano runs and magical chord and tempo changes race alongside riffs and solos that fly from the fingers of Stanley Clarke and Al Di Meola like incandescent cometary fragments, wild and crazy but always with an immaculate control so often lost on rock players. Lenny White's drumming is the strong, still centre of the maelstrom, so deft and exquisite as it holds the music in place that you barely notice it, until it jumps up and demands your appreciation as he drops in a sharp fill, or executes the time signature equivalent of a high speed hand-brake turn.
Such blazing, shameless, virtuoso playing, performed within such a disciplned, musically focused arena, is not to everyone's taste, and I've beem told before that I favour the too-many-notes school of musical overkill, but nonetheless this is one album I feel quite justified revelling in for its sheer exuberance.
A joy to rediscover, a relic from another age, a priceless musical artefact from a time when the music mattered, and nothing else. Luvvit!

This is one of the best Jazz Funk sounds ever recorded.
The real amount of fluidity from the music displayed here on this recording from those long forgoton days of the mid seventies by "Return to Forver" was their own abilty as young Jazz muscians to take on the intensity of rock and roll then they make something else from the direction of the flow of the music was going.
"Romantic Warrior" shows the ability to rise above the average of general recordings of the time the 1970's and display that Jazz muscians can rock while existing on the edge of spontaneous combustion that has always been the cutting edge which defines Jazz from what now is we tend to label as jazz.
Those days are gone but not forgotten.