A pretty mellow early fusion album. By mellow I mean relative to Mahavishnu/Tony Williams etc.. i.e. what most people think of when they hear the word fusion... You can think of this record as Bitches Brew's conservative, less hairy cousin. There are some seriously gorgeous moments in the first half of this record where Don Pearson's glistening electric piano cascades over Byrd's echo-drenched trumpet and then gets washed over by a tide of severely airy clouds of horns/woodwinds. Last track "The Dude" is truly dire jazz-funk, but the rest of this record is a nice spacey delight.
More from the softer side of fusion. There are no awkward clunky attempts to make Jazz that rocks here, this is a rich, subtle album. A full orchestra rears its head occasionally, but it is used relatively sparingly and does not disrupt the grooves here at all.
