FunkFreak75 One of the most obscure albums that I've discovered in my recent deep dive into the early Jazz-Rock Fusion scene comes from British intellectual Neil Ardley. Here he composes complex jazz-rock and then enlists the help of many seasoned musicians (many of whom had served in the ranks of Ian Carr's Nucleus).

Side 1: 1. "Prologue/Rainbow One" (10:25) layers upon layers of minimalist arpeggi performed polyrhythmically in rondo form--until 3:05 when they all come together in an awesome kind of DON ELLIS/EARTH WIND & FIRE/AVERAGE WHITE BAND jam. And then, oddity of all oddities (especially for a Jazz-Rock Fusion song) is the fact that the first instrumental solos don't begin until the seventh minute! (Given to Ian Carr, of course.) Very interesting--and enjoyable! (18.75/20)

2. "Rainbow Two" (7:35) a gentle duet of acoustic bass and flute open this one before woodwinds join in. Though mathematically interesting, eventually, the gentle, plodding music becomes rather soporific. (13.25/15)

Side 2: 1. "Rainbow Three" (3:28) Jean-Luc Ponty-like cello gets the leadership role over a percussive, Afro-folk rhythmic weave from the drums, percussion, and funky electric bass. Everything slows down at the end for a very subdued dénouement. (8.875/10)

2. "Rainbow Four" (6:15) this one starts out sounding like a merger of old-style jazz with modern minimalism but then everything shifts into old style Sketches of Spain-like music for trumpet, flutes, and other wind instruments to solo and weave in and out of a gorgeous Spanish-sounding ballad. Absolutely gorgeous melodies performed with awesomely inventive "choral" weave. Soprano sax solos in the fourth minute. The pain and anguish of the soloist gets so overwhelmingly powerful in the fifth and sixth minutes! Music does not get much better than this! (10/10)

Side 3: 1. "Rainbow Five" (4:25) sounds like a modern melding of DON ELLIS' big band ORCHESTRA with a smooth Weather Report or Freddie Hubbard. Great clarinet play in the song's first and only extended solo. Ends with another odd separate whole-band horn motif. (9/10)

3. "Rainbow Six" (7:39) flutes and other winds trill around each other like butterflies before electric bass, vibes, hand percussion, and brass enter providing gentle waves of Kind of Blue-like textures. The bass and jazz guitar provide the only disruptors to the gentle waves of winds--the bass creating an EBERHARD WEBER-like feel. By the final third of the song the rolling waves of wind instruments begin to show a hint of a minimalist pattern. Nice tune. A very interesting composition. (13.5/15)

Side 4: 1. "Rainbow Seven/Epilogue" (14:58) sounds and feels like a kind of mélange of several (if not) all of the themes and styles of the other songs--the Epilogue portion definitely mirrors the opening in a re-oriented kind of variation. A little slower and more spacious than the opening side, there is some nice guitar and electric piano play involved (which was not so featured on previous songs). I love the rolling bass sound and the big band horn. Ken Shaw's extended guitar solo is a bit too jazz guitar-like and not so rock 'n' roll, and then Brian Smith's sax solo follows. With four minutes to go there is a full shift into a completely new and different motif with bass and drums leading the band into an almost-imperceptibly speeding up pace will horns et al. follow and embellish. (27/30)

Total Time 54:46

An album with wonderfully crisp and clean compositions performed and recorded with equal definition and clarity. With no side extending beyond 18 minutes--and three less than 15 minutes--in length I guess it should be no wonder that the sound quality is so great.

A-/five stars; a minor masterpiece of finely-crafted jazz-rock fusion--an album that I think every prog lover would love.

Sean Trane I was always a bit wary of third-stream artistes, because I’m not exactly one to really enjoy adaptation of classical works (well investigate them out of curiosity, but that’s about it) into whatever other genre (jazz, rock, reggae), unless a spoof or really bringing in completely different approach (like early Tomita or Emerson’s experiments in the 70’s) and likewise of the attempts to write original classical themes and arranging them in jazzy manner. Don’t get me wrong, here, I’m not accusing Ardley of doing either, but I can’t help of thinking of that issue when listening to some of his works, namely KoR. Actually reading the line-up should convince me that such an album is outstanding, because it features the cream of the crop of 70’s British jazz and JR/F: Barb Thompson, Ian Carr & Bertles-Castle-Smith- Sutton-Sellers (of Nucleus fame), John Taylor and Dave McRae (of Mole fame). Actually we could easily call this type of work a “big band third stream” work, given the 17-man formation (not all at once, though) at work on Rainbow.

According to Neil Ardley, KoR is the third step of his trilogy, started with Greek variations and Symphony Of Amaranths, and the present is a work influenced by and working around the Balinese music five note scale. Actually Ardley was commissioned by the city of London for a piece for the Camden Festival of 74 and in its original presentation it was a really big band composition. The present works sees a lighter adaptation of the score recorded in 76. But I assure you there is much more to KoR than those boring and unsubtle five note Bali meanderings. To be quite honest, except at a few odd and short places throughout the album, I don’t hear much Balinese influences. I think it’s more of a musician’s musician thing than something for a more un-professional auditor. Indeed, Neil spends some time in the booklet explaining the subtleties of his incorporation of that Bali scale, but if he has to do so, I’d say that it’s because he’s rather unsuccessful at making it more apparent without being bluntly Balinesean about it; but then again I’m rather profane to musical composition, so this last comment might be off-mark. This seven-movement Rainbow-suite takes on the whole album with an added prologue and epilogue, which therefore announced an ambitious work, and indeed, we’re delivered just that. Actually I’d have thought that both the intro and outro would’ve been atmospheric doodling pieces to frame-up the main body of work, but they’re digging almost right away into the Rainbow themes. Well you can definitely (and almost instantly) hear Ardley’s main influence of Ellington and Evans (Bill) in KoR, but you definitely have an updated version with slightly rockier arrangements and even some synths intrusions (well maybe too strong a word) courtesy of musical director Ardley himself. As far as third stream go, there are indeed some rather classical-symphonic moments as well, and they’re probably the passages where I tend to lose attention and re-focus it once the mood is more fusion-esque. Don’t jump to conclusions either, despite the presence of almost all of the second full Nucleus group line-up, this is not an Ian Carr-sounding album either.

The reissue of the present album with different artwork has seen a bunch of bonus tracks totally unrelated to the original album tagged on to it, and these were recorded some time later: a Tangerine Dream-like solo synth layers & sequencers like the 13-mins Intimate Vistas from 80 and the horribly out-of-place Refracted Rainbow from 91 with Carr and Hiseman, which is much more related to Zyklus than KoR. These “bonuses” actually ruin the pleasure of the original album, as well as suppressing the original artwork for a cheesy and atrociously cheap computer rainbow colour palette. Sometimes more is less, and that reissue is a textbook case of such an expression. Prefer finding this little gem that concentrates on the original recording, as you’ll be enjoying the subtle original artwork instead of the insulting reissue’s sore excuse of cover.