Weather Report - Heavy Weather

Cover art included, liner notes not included

DSD file created by Gus Skinas from the original Sony Super Audio CD cutting masters.

Weather Reports biggest selling album is that ideal thing, a popular and artistic success and for the same reasons. For one thing, Joe Zawinul revealed an unexpectedly potent commercial streak for the first time since his Cannonball Adderley days, contributing what has become a perennial hit, Birdland. Indeed Birdlandis a remarkable bit of recordmaking, a unified, ever developing piece of music that evokes, without in any way imitating, a joyous evening on 52nd St. with a big band. The other factor is the full emergence of Jaco Pastorius as a co-leader,his dancing, staccato bass lifting itself out of the bass range as a third melodic voice, completely dominating his own ingenious Teen Town. By now, Zawinul has become WRs de facto commander in the studio; his colorful synthesizers dictate the textures, his conceptions are carefully planned, with little of the freewheeling improvisation of only five years before. Wayne Shorter's saxophones are now reticent, if always eloquent, beams of light in Zawinuls general scheme while Alex Acuna shifts ably over to the drums and Manolo Badrena handles the percussion. Released just as the jazz-rock movement began to run out of steam, this landmark album proved that there was plenty of creative life left in the idiom.