The recording is notable in Shorter's body of work both for its relative lack of improvisation and for the high level of its compositions and group arrangements.

The composition "Shere Khan, the Tiger" was previously recorded by a group including Shorter and Carlos Santana on the latter's 1980 album The Swing of Delight.

The cover art for the album is a pastel portrait of Shorter by actor Billy Dee Williams.

Compositionally, "Atlantis" is noteworthy due to the inclusion of unusual intervallic melodies and a sense of economy and space generated through the use of parallel dominant 9th suspended chords coupled with contrapuntal bass lines.

This approach is exemplified by the composition "On the Eve of Departure" which programmatically resembles "When worlds Collide", the George Pal Sci-Fi classic.