Pretty much every player from the Bitches Brew sessions, or those who jammed with Miles during that era, wound up playing in (and often fronting their own) unruly fusion units well into the ‘70s, and keys maestro Chick Corea was no exception; it must of seemed like the apocalypse to jazz purists, watching all their former hard-bop heroes expand the palette into territory that was previously taboo to any self-respecting jazznik---I would’ve liked to have seen the looks on their faces! Chick put together his band Return to Forever in early ’72 and initially focused on a mellower Latin vibe, one which bears no resemblance to the jazz-rock behemoth you are listening to right now; this was largely a product of guitarist Al DiMeola’s entrance into the band, but everyone here is a star in their own right (Lenny White on drums / percussion & the insanely talented Stanley Clarke on bass), not least of all Chick himself. He lays down some of the spaciest synthesizer runs this side of Saturn, demolishing time signatures and sounding something like the noises I would imagine coming from R2D2’s family reunion, but never straying so far that you fall out of the pocket. A true fusion super-group if there ever was one, superior to Weather Report & perhaps even the Eleventh House in my opinion (I know I’ll take shit for that), thus it’s no surprise that this LP took home the Grammy for best jazz performance that year.
