Jade Warrior - Kites
(CD 1976/2010, 36:36, Cherry Red / Esoteric Records ECLEC2199)

Jade Warrior - Way Of The Sun
(1978/2010, 41:29, Cherry Red / Esoteric Records ECLEC2198)

The tracks:
CD: Kites
  1- Song of the Forest (3:13)
  2- Wind Song (4:05)
  3- The Emporer Kite (1:58)
  4- Wind Borne (6:52)
  5- Land of the Warrior (3:29)
  6- Quietly by the River Bank (3:20)
  7- Arrival of the Emperor(1:07)
  8- The Ch’Eng:(2:32)
  9- Arrival of Chia Shan(4:10)
10- Towards the Mountains (2:04)
11- The Last Question(0:36)
CD: Way Of The Sun
  1- Sun Ra (3:31)
  2- Sun Child (2:44)
  3- Moontears (4:04)
  4- Heaven Stone (5:27)
  5- Way of the Sun (6:01)
  6- River Song (5:03)
  7- Carnival (2:17)
  8- Dance of the Sun (4:55)
  9- Death of Ra (7:21)

Jade Warrior Website        samples        Esoteric Recordings


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)

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