Track Listing

1. Nubian Sundance
2. American Tango
3. Cucumber Slumber
4. Mysterious Traveller
5. Blackthorn Rose
6. Scarlet Woman
7. Jungle Book

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44435 in Music
• Released on: 2002-06-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered

Amazon.co.uk Review
A quarter-century on, Weather Report's music has dated in a way that Miles Davis' best fusion efforts haven't. That's especially true of the albums the band made beginning with Mysterious Traveller (1974), at which point it began looking more to technological advances to further its sound than the creative brain trust of keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Shorter largely fades into the background here as Zawinul tests out his battery of ARPs and Moogs and Echoplex-equipped electric piano against a busy battery of percussionists.

Still, there's a lot of good music on the album, which is issued here in 24-bit digitally remastered form. "Blackthorn Rose" is a piano (and melodica) and soprano sax duet of lovesome beauty while the phase-shifting "Nubian Sundance" generates excitement through its orchestrated effects, complex rhythmic scheme and simulated crowd explosions. New to the evolving Weather Report is bassist Alphonso Johnson, who lends a funkier and more musical touch than his sacked (and highly overrated) predecessor, Miroslav Vitous. --Lloyd Sachs

CD Description
One of Weather Report's most varied and exciting records, overflowing with daring keyboard chops, saucy, multi-ethnic rhythms, molten-hot textures and boundless energy. By this point, Zawinul was becoming the elder statesman of fusion, hismastery of his synth arsenal unparalleled by anyone save Chick Corea. But where Corea opted for the far reaches of Hubbard space, Zawinul rooted himself in virtual rainforests, where teeming exotic aggregates of organic life possessed their own unique grooves.
On "Nubian Sundance", Zawinul's keyboards cut colourful swathes through dense jungle funk bottomed out by Ishmael Wilburn's drums and Miroslav Vitous' serpentine basslines. MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER also sports the Weather Report standard "Cucumber Slumber", rippling curbside funk that finds Shorter waxing rhapsodically over Alphonso Johnson's booty-quiverin' bottom end. Superfine struts from the sultans of fusion swing.

Customer Reviews

Cleaning away the grime of the past 28 years
When I reviewed the bog-standard CD version of this album a couple of years ago, my parting plea to the people at Sony was for a re-mastered version. The original CD was a standard back-catalogue re-issue, rushed out in the mid-1980s along with tens of thousands of other CBS recordings, in response to the rise of CD. The CD was, frankly, a step backward from the original LP.

Now at last we have a CD version that more than does sonic justice to this jazz/funk/rock fusion masterpiece. On the less dense tracks, the clarity is now so astounding that it's as if an extra dimension has been added. The sleevenotes are informative and the track-by-track band listings are fuller than on the original CD and fuller even than on the original LP. At long last all the vocalists are given credit.

This was the first album where Weather Report got the entire album packaging absolutely right for potential new recruits from the rock audience: spacey cover art, spacey synth sounds, and plenty of pounding rhythms. Indeed the rhythms are the most innovative I've heard on any Weather Report album.

This is also the album where keyboardsman Zawinul's dominance over saxophonist Shorter began to show. On the long opening track, the excellent 'Nubian Sundance', Zawinul contributes layer after layer of electronic keyboard. Almost contemptuously he gives Shorter room for a tiny, run-of-the-mill solo, but the sax does nothing to propel the basic song along. On 'Jungle Book', another pretty tune, Shorter has no part to play whatsoever.

But then there is the gorgeous duet, 'Blackthorn Rose', and it's clear that there is still much empathy and rapport between the two men.

There are two other concert favourites on the album: the title track and 'Scarlet Woman', which Pastorius re-interpreted outstandingly for the '8:30' live LP.

Sometimes I feel this is my favourite Report album. But frankly all the albums from 'Sweetnighter' to 'Heavy Weather' are excellent.

I just don't know why it took Sony so long to polish this brilliancy.

Early forecast and still promising
This was the first weather report album i got - way back in the 70s - unlike anything else i'd ever heard then and still has that uniqueness and magic. the zawinul/shorter partnership was a union made in musical heaven and Mysterious Traveller is an aptly named atmospheric tone poem from a more advanced culture . The rhythms reminded me of Santana's Caravanserai back then - subtle, infectious and insistent, funky bass, then layered on top the most amazing keyboard structures, very different to the Yes/Genesis/ELP quasi classical sounds i'd experienced before, or conventional oscar peterson / bud powell sort of jazz i knew. And then above it all the soaring eagle of Shorter's soprano sax with total command and freedom of the melodic landscape. So many styles fused together in harmony - not easy music but damned rewarding. zawinul's themes have a formality which are a delight to uncover, a layer at a time and shorter's exploratory solos are challenging, delightful and at times breathtaking. Stand out tracks? Not really, Blackthorn Rose is starkly beautiful, Jungle Book almost visual, but each visit will bring fresh insights. Genius.

Beauty and Intensity
I first bought Mysterious Traveller - on vinyl - round about its release in 1974. Nearly 30 years later it still sounds fresh and exciting. The electronics of Mr Zawinul never rob the music of its human expression, and some of the wisps and turns of Mr Shorter, a gentle giant of the saxophone, are simply exquisite and made all the more so by the pressure and textures of the ensemble. For me, Weather Report never bettered the consistent intensity and beauty of Mysterious Traveller. Shorter and Zawinul have each produced many wonderful things in their careers, but this record was the peak of something they did together.