GEORGE DUKE — Liberated Fantasies (review)

GEORGE DUKE — Liberated Fantasies album cover Album · 1976 · Funk Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Sean Trane
By 76, George Duke had pretty well turned his back on JR/F and was churning some increasingly sickening love ditties aimed at radio airplay, and this album bears well its name, but not the positive way that you’d expect from an artiste his calibre. This album changes again the formula, this time inviting everyone around the studios at the time (the usual suspects if you wish), but much less successfully so than that “Blues” album released the previous year.

Indeed opening on two insipid and syrupy love ballads, George has the guts to bring us Back To Where We Never Left funky-fusion piece, which is indeed quite dishonest, since the man has been trailing along every possible aisle of the pop-gunk industrial waste dumps. After an interesting but way too short What The, the album plunges into the unfathomable depths of MOR/AOR gunk with the Tryin’ track and later on the over-sweetish After The Love (wouldn’t you have guessed it with such a title). There are still some good JR/F tracks like Can Hear That (with those jungle wails), the syrupy but thankfully-short synth-string-filled instrumental Tzina and finally the entertaining, lengthy but filled with Wishbone-meets-Magma kitsch vocals title track with Embamba’s bass solo and a slight twist of Santana; all of these should or will please most progheads.

Not as bad as it might seem from my review so far, Liberated Fantasies still have some cool fusion moments, even if they now sound a little worn-thin, but it’s got some real stinkers on it that ruin the album’s continuity and again one can only question Duke’s production choices. Approach with care and caution, but if you don’t mind half-good albums with tons of gunky AOR crap, this can still be up your alley, but it’s nothing essential for sure.

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