Herbie Hancock ‎- 1974 - Thrust

I feel like this Hancock album is often overlooked simply because of the fact that it came a year after the majestic and legendary Head Hunters. Sure, it is a superior album in both execution and ideas but Thrust can readily stand by its own as an awesome album made by Herbie during his prime creative time. While both albums a very approachable I think Thrust is a much more laid back and has riffs that are demand less of your focus. I don't mean that in a bad way by no means at all. There's nothing in it that's out to get you, everything just kinda flows together. The focus is still so much on keyboards but all the instruments are mixed at similar sound levels and I like that. It feels like the band is just one large stream of grooves. Awesome stuff.

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Herbie Hancock - Sextant

This is something that's widely known (at least when it comes to jazz) so I decided to offer this release in flac for those who are either into archiving or are fans of lossless formats.

When it comes to modern jazz (bebop and further on) you could say that Herbie Hancock was one of those guys who had seen it all and tried it all. He played with a lot of greats, he made some marvelous albums of his own and he made some nice commercial hits. He started, like most of his generation, with bebop and hard bop releasing a dozen of interesting albums. Later on after he met Miles Davis and dabbled into electric things thus he moved on to fusion. During his fusion years he released a lot of hit albums like Headhunters and what not.

Sextant is important and interesting because it fits somewhere in the middle. It fits in what we call the Mwandishi period. This period came after he discovered fusion but it was still not all that friendly yet. This was because he was just getting into more complex and more demanding jazz (The Prisoner, Maiden Voyage). So naturally when he moved to a more fusion sounding music it was chaotic, experimental and complex

Freshly singed to a new label after being on Warner Brothers for a few years Herbie went completely batshit insane and made this album. It's very far ahead of its time so it wasn't liked very much at the time. I guess the nearest comparison to this album would be the interstellar works of Sun Ra (maybe that's why I like this so much) but there is so much more to this album. It's strange, it's cosmic and it demands a lot of attention.

If you are willing to give it the attention it deserves you will get in return a beautifully composed chaos of electronic sounds mixed with acoustic instruments. It will take you somewhere far away to a distant planet.

Part one, two and three.

Freddie Hubbard - Straight Life

Freddie was a guy who did a lot of work in his heyday. He played all over the place from Herbie Hancock fusion albums to the excellent Ascension by Coltrane but he also did some things on his own. Up until the seventies he did the usual Blue Note bebop and post-bop stuff which is technically in musical sense excellent but it wasn't really breaking any new grounds.

Then arrived the seventies with all its new ideas with this electronic music. Now Freddie got some ideas and decided to switch labels and start doing fusion albums. What followed is kind of a mixed bag. After a while he got stale and released some really cheesy cash grabs. The usual 70s kitsch. Despite that his first four albums were one of his most successful and innovative ones that he ever did. Out of those four Straight Life is probably my favorite.

While other albums had more song oriented structure with 6-7 minute tracks this album has just two long tracks with one filler (but overall nice) ballad to fill out the empty space. This actually why I prefer it much more from the others simply because it sounds like a long jam. The lineup on this album is nothing but stellar. You have Herbie Hancock on keyboards, Henderson on saxophone, George Benson on guitar (which is mostly just in the background), Ron Carter on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. All of their signature sounds are very much present on this record especially Herbie who delivers that really nice Mwandishi soundscapes into the album.

Overall I really like this album a lot, and I would recommend it to anyone who has the least bit interest in jazz even if you have a distaste for fusion.

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