This was a transition album for Weather Report as they were moving more into electronic territory. For my money, the keyboards tend to overwhelm some of the arrangements here. Still, when it’s this good, you really can’t argue too much. You’ll note that I’ve included this under the progressive rock stuff at Music Street Journal. Generally we put fusion there because, for one thing to me the main different between jazzy prog and fusion is which has more rock. Secondly, given our choices of genre (prog, metal and non-prog) it seems that the most likely audience will be found with the progressive rock fans.

There are two musicians featured throughout the album: Joe Zawinul (keyboards and more) and Wayne Shorter (saxophones and more). Other musicians are included on various songs throughout. Those musicians include Chester Thompson (drums), Jaco Pastorius (bass) and Narada Michael Walden (drums).

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2014  Volume 3 at lulu.com/strangesound.

As this opens it seems to combine world music with space in an atmospheric bit of sound. That grows up until a rather funky kind of world music meets jazz groove emerges. The rhythm section on this is pretty involved and intriguing, but the keyboards really drive the melodies in the early parts of the piece. There are some great shifts and changes and some awesome instrumental interplay as this really kicks into high gear. We get some inspired horn work and some great bass playing, too. They drop it back later to a rhythm section meets bits of keyboards section. That gets some horns added after a while. It never really climbs back up, though, as sound effects come over to end it.