I’ll be straight with you: I never was into Jade Warrior. When these albums came out in the seventies, I thought the band was a bunch of pretentious, intellectual make-the-music-more-difficult-than-it-has-to-be ambient boors. So I never listened to them again. Now, many years later, I get a chance to re-appreciate the band, that in the intervening years have built a real cult status. Today it’s easier to recognize that Jade Warrior were at the time at the forefront of the ambient music movement and thus formed a role model for bands like The Enid and especially Sky. The latter took this mix of classical influenced and synthesizer music and made a popular and very successful version of it. However, I still can’t get into the music of Jade Warrior. I find Way Of The Sun slightly better to listen to than Kites, mainly because Way Of The Sun contains more fluent compositions; especially the title track is quite nice and upbeat. Kites is mainly experimental with short tracks with long titles. * (Kites) **+ (Way Of The Sun) André de Waal (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
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