JADE WARRIOR - "Released" - LP 1971 - PROG - 1st US press - VERTIGO SWIRL

$

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JADE  WARRIOR

"RELEASED"

Vertigo      VEL 1009

1971

NM / EX

FIRST  PRESSING (gatefold)

BEST UNSEALED PRICE ON EBAY AS OF 1-19-2019

Absolutely beautiful copy of Jade Warrior's third LP release.  This is the American pressing which still features the classic Vertigo swirl label and the original gatefold cover.  The LP has never been played, plus the day I bought it and opened it, I put the disc in a white paper inner sleeve with a plastic lining.

Side note:  IN 1972, I already had a large record collection.  I was spending a weekend in Houston, Texas with my girlfriend Michelle and she turned me on to this album.  I was stunned.  I'd never heard anything like it.  By the time I drove back to San Antonio on Monday, I had bought the first three Jade Warrior albums.

From the fine ALLMUSIC web site: 

"If Jade Warrior's second album has any flaw, it is that its predecessor traveled so far off the

conventional beaten tracks of early-'70s prog that anything less than absolute reinvention could

only be regarded as a rerun of past glories. To write off Released as little more than a slapdash

shadow of Jade Warrior, however, is to overlook the leaps and bounds that the band did make.

The opening "Eyes On You" journeys in on a positively spiky guitar and horn duel, while Glyn

Havard's vocals have taken on tones that are far-removed from the Jethro Tull-shaped nuances

with which they were once most readily compared. Staggering, too, are the almost bluesy guitar

work-outs that leap unexpectedly in and out of the mix, overwhelming all but the most ferocious

elements elsewhere in the arsenal -- judging only by the crescendo that closes it, "Three Horned

Dragon King" could not have been better named. Similarly, "Water Curtain Cave" is as much a

melting of souls as it is a gentle song, while other numbers tackle light jazz and classical prog

without once vacating the band's accustomed framework of brilliance. Again, there is little here

that Jade Warrior itself did not predict, but the unerring delivery of those predictions is a marvel

in itself."

Stored vertically in a smoke free environment for 48 years.