Red Warrior
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| Red Warrior | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1990 | |||
| Genre | Jazz, free jazz | |||
| Label | Axiom[1] | |||
| Producer | Bill Laswell | |||
| Ronald Shannon Jackson chronology | ||||
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Red Warrior is an album by the American jazz drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, released in 1990.[2][3] It was rereleased by Mango Records the following year.[4]
The album was produced by Bill Laswell.[5] Jackson opted to record the album without horns, instead utilizing a three-guitar roster.[6] Red Warrior, inspired by a tour that Jackson undertook in Africa, was recorded in one day.[7]
Critical reception
The Washington Post thought that the guitarists "all fall into one hard-rock or funk cliché after another ... For all the volcanic energy happening at the bottom of this music, the top is so uninspired that it dooms the album."[5] The Los Angeles Times called the album "a flawed experiment," writing that Jackson "failed to solve metal's rhythmic stolidity."[12] The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "the songs cut deeper than any Jackson has delivered since the days of his harmolodic fusion band, the Decoding Society."[9] The St. Petersburg Times relegated it to "the guitar-mag crowd."[4]
AllMusic wrote that "the mix is expanded with plenty of jazz improvisation, weaves of effects-riddled guitar lines, complex head statements, and, of course, the drummer's pan-stylistic rhythmic support."[8] Billboard called Red Warrior an "extremely uncompromising fusion" album.[15] The New York Times, in its Jackson obituary, deemed it "a fiery guitar-oriented session."[16]