Weather Report [1971]

Weather Report: Wayne Shorter (soprano saxophone); Joe Zawinul (piano, Fender Rhodes, syntheszier); Miroslav Vitous (acoustic bass); Alphonse Mouzon (drums); Airto Moreira (percussion).
Includes liner notes by John Ephland.
Digitally remastered by Vic Anesini (November 1991, Sony Music Studios, New York, New York).
When a good chunk of Miles Davis' jazz-rock crew left to form what would become Weather Report, few realized that the future of jazz-rock, the progenitor of "fusion," would never be the same. Weather Report spun the organic foundations of be-bop off into outer space, rigged with the galvanic energy of rock and funk, and changed the courses of two genres.
WEATHER REPORT isn't exactly a barnburner of a record, and it doesn't transmit amplified power, or even a rock frisson--instead, this imaginative quintet look to rock's fragmented corpus in search of new frontiers. "Milky Way" is a luxurious vamp into the echoes of Zawinul's twin electric piano/organ set-up, while "Seventh Arrow" sets the controls for the heart of the sun, fulfilling the promise of the electric boogaloo of BITCHES BREW and AGHARTA.