Return To Forever

Album review

Jazz-fusion has spawned plenty of rather distressing albums but also, fortunately, many masterpieces. Like this album, recorded on the 2nd and 3rd of February 1972 in New York. Return to Forever sees the pianist Chick Corea, who had just left Miles Davis's outfit, alongside electric bass god Stanley Clarke, the underrated flautist and saxophonist Joe Farrell and the Brazilian duo of singer Flora Purim and her husband, the drummer and percussionist Airto Moreira. This light "Brazilian touch" is one of the interesting elements in this fusion, which offers an alternative to the music offered by Miles or John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, which had much more of a rock sound. At his electric keyboard, Corea remains attached to the melodic framework of his compositions and the mystical atmosphere, which was so popular in its day, is never over-done. Most importantly, the incontinent splurging of notes that has clogged up so many electronic projects is absent here. On Crystal Silence, Farrell's sax solo is to die for, and Corea's playing, light as a feather, will take some beating. Derided as a circus animal by his detractors, Stanley Clarke is also strikingly subtle and his performance on Sometime Ago - La Fiesta is among his most moving. In the end, Return to Forever is perhaps considered one of the greatest jazz-fusion albums because it sweeps away the clichés. Thereafter, despite a regularly changing line-up, the band proved a colossal success (six studio albums followed in five years), undoubtedly because of its distinctly 'rockier' formula, which was a major departure from the style of this first chapter. © Marc Zisman / Qobuz