RETURN TO FOREVER — The Best of Return to Forever (review)

RETURN TO FOREVER — The Best of Return to Forever album cover Boxset / Compilation · 1980 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
js
I would not recommend this album as a very good overview of the music Return to Forever has made over the years. Basically there were four phases in the career of this talented jazz fusion group. The first phase, which includes their first two albums, was Brazilian flavored jazz that veered towards free-form jazz rock in the solo sections. The next phase only lasts for one album, "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy", and features guitarist Bill Connor leading the band into a very rockish Mahavishnu style. The next three albums feature a style unique to RTF that can best be described as hyper nerd-funk mixed with progressive rock. This third phase culminated with their popular "Romantic Warrior" album. Their final phase, which includes their last studio album and RTF live, finds the band employing weak to annoying vocals and an overly busy horn section with a big drop in compositional material to work with. Unfortunately this ironically titled best of collection pulls five songs from the last phase of their carrer, when the band had lost their way, and adds to that three songs from their more focused "Romantic Warrior" album. Taken as a whole it is not a bad album, thanks to the Warrior cuts, but it is not a very good sampling of their career.

Instead of this uneven collection I would recommend their first album, simply titled "Return to Forever", in which you can hear Chick Corea playing his slightly distorted Fender Rhodes in a dissonant modern Latin Jazz style with an energy and fury that he was never able to duplicate again.
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