Herbie Hancock – Crossings – 1972 (2014)
Jazz Fusion, Avant-garde Jazz, Jazz-Funk
US
1. Sleeping Giant (24:45)
2. Quasar (7:23)
3. Water Torture (13:55)
Herbie Hancock – electric piano, piano, Mellotron, percussion
Bennie Maupin – soprano saxophone, alto flute, bass clarinet, piccolo, percussion
Eddie Henderson – trumpet, flugelhorn, percussion
Julian Priester – bass, tenor & alto trombone, percussion
Buster Williams – electric bass, bass, percussion
with :
Patrick Gleason – Moog synthesizer
Victor Pontoja – congas
Candy Love, Sandra Stevens, Della Horne, Victoria Domagalski, Scott Beach – vocals
Recorded at Pacific Recording Studios, San Mateo. Moog and Mellotron recorded at Different Fur Trading Company, San Francisco.
Originally released on February 17, 1972 by Warner Bros.
Еще один замороченный альбом Херби Хэнкока его замороченного цикла "Mwandishi".
Здесь все еще более экспериментально, авангардно и отнюдь не просто для восприятия. Но интересно. Погружаясь в эту музыку, словно оказываешься в бескрайнем пространстве звуков, необычных музыкальных форм и причудливых композиционных конструкций. Уследить за развитием музыкальных тем довольно сложно, потому что зачастую все это кажется абсолютно случайным и даже хаотичным. Еще больше, чем на предыдущем диске, здесь разворачиваются бушующие авангардные эксперименты, в которых джаз в принципе не всегда является основой движущей силой.
Вновь на альбоме всего три трека, только центральная сюита на этот раз расположена на первой стороне. "Sleeping Giant" - монументальная композиция, на протяжении 25 минут которой происходят бесконечные смены настроений, перемена оттенков и стилей - от фанки грувов до мелодичных моментов, от прогрессивного фьюжена до более традиционных фишек.
В этой пестроте звуков периодически всплывают штуки, которые вштыривают по-настоящему, но зачастую кажущийся порой бесформенным поток звуков проносится мимо, мало чего оставляя для приятного послевкусия. Пожалуй, главное, что прикалывает в этой записи - это, насколько качественно она сделана с технической точки зрения. Но этого маловато, чтобы проникнуться музыкой по полной программе.
by masterp1an
The second "Mwandishi" album is Crossings and comes out in 72 with a stunning "African" artwork (something missing its predecessor), courtesy of Robert Springett (a regular Hancock collab until the end of the 70's) and with an unchanged line-up, but this time a certain Patrick Gleason is adding a whole bunch of electronic "noises" on his Moog and in his Frisco studio, where the album was recorded in March. Gleeson is a university student and one of the first to own a moog and he will persuade Herbie to leave him the master tapes, over which he will add his "noises". Herbie loved it, his bandmates a tad less (one of them apparently said Gleeson's ARP synth sounded like a vacuum cleaner) and the specialized press hated it and shot mercilessly the album in flame, so again it sold too few, partly because the WB label was not a jazz-rock label and didn't push it enough. In the jazz realm, rarely a bigger mistake happened, when Warner got rid of Hancock's contract. Herbie would then leave Frisco and sign with Columbia, the label that Weather Report, Return To Forever, Miles Davis and Mahavishnu orchestra called home. On his second album, Columbia hit the jackpot with Head Hunters.
The Crossings album opens on African drums mixed with electronic space noises that soon evoke the dawn's tropical forest noises, before Hancock slowly invades the aural space just at sunrise. A few minutes later, we're already cooking under the morning sun, as Herbie's piano calms down after a wild solo and the whole tracks hides for shelter. Williams' bass soon picks up the pace, reviving the track with Priester's trombones and Maupin's bass clarinet, then herbie again. A little later, there are more outstanding moments, especially the wild bass/piano exchange around the 13 and 15th minutes. Later on, the track goes a little dissonant under the mid-afternoon torrid heat, an understandable side-effect, but once the cruising speed is reached the tracks spread its wings to full grandeur. A bit later, the tracks dies at sundown in sad brass death throes. So much going on and not a moment of rest that your head might just saturate and the more you listen, the more you hear Gleason's electronics invading the whole album, permeating almost every tracks' moments. The aptly-titled almost 25-mins Sleeping Giant is a monumental Hancock-penned track, probably his best ever, that is clearly THE definitive Mwandishi statement
The flipside features two Maupin-penned tracks that together equal the previous Sleeping Giant, not only in length, but in quality as well. Again starting on electronic noises and percussions, Quasar is soon taken over by Maupin's flute and Williams' dissonant bass. The 7-mins+ track Quasar is a succession of dissonant and harmonic moments, until its dies into Gleason's Black Hole and will not turn into a supernova. Well, something electronic does escape Gleason's Black Hole, and it turns out to be the Maupin-penned 14-mins Water Torture track, where it's hard to guess why Gleason didn't get partial credits for it. Indeed his electronica is all over the track, often answering Maupin and Henderson's wind instruments;
An awesome album, probably my fave (with Sextant as a runner-up), Crossings is IMHO Hancock's apex. In his second album after BB and away from Miles, Herbie manages an album that matches BB's quality. Between BB and some of Floyd's outer space tracks, Crossings is indeed an aptly?titled album, as it represents a crossing point between all kinds of musical directions. Simply astounding.
by Sean Trane
Crossings is an incredible record, one of the finest pieces of music I have ever heard in any genre. Abstract jazz fusion, 20th century composition, modern electronics, African poly-rhythms and a psychedelic production that pays attention to every little detail combine to create a jazz style for a future that hasn't happened yet. Almost forty years later this album still sounds incredibly ahead of it's time.
Side one belongs to Herbie, and his Sleeping Giant is a massive sprawling futuristic African suite that alternates intense avant-funk improvs with quieter mysterious sections. Herbie's playing during the abstract improvisations is incredibly intense and shows how he is the master at building a solo over a modal vamp. The quiet sections are even more inventive as Herbie shows he is also a master of modern composition and orchestration and uses his three piece horn section and electronics to build mini-orchestral textures that recall Stravinsky and Ravel. The ability to compose on a sophisticated level is one of the things that make Hancock and his band members in The Sextant a notch above other psychedelic ensembles of this time period.
Side two belongs to woodwind virtuoso Bennie Maupin, who also proves he knows how to write and orchestrate by turning in two incredible aural tone poems. Throughout the album Maupin's playing on soprano sax and bass clarinet help add to that early 20th century Russian and French chamber music sound that seems to permeate much of this album. Often his melodies recall Moussourgsky, Stravinsky and others.
Both of Bennie's compositional contributions to this album are masterpieces. Quasar is tense and mysterious and features a 'futuristic' wordless soprano melody that is similar to the classic Star Trek melody. Much of the playing on this song is abstract and improvisational, but the musicians stay calm and focused and avoid indulgent improv clichés. The reultant music is delicate and sensitive, a far cry from your cliché avant-jazz 'freak out'.
Side two closes with Water Torture, in which a deep slow bass line doubled on bass clarinet sounds like a cross between the slowest funk groove ever and yet another dark Russian composition. Once again the electronics and carefully orchestrated horn section combine to make previously unheard sound textures as we drift on an almost a-rhythmical ocean of sound. The big plus on this track is that Herbie lays it on thick with the Mellotron. Towards the end we are mostly hearing impressionistic Mellotron melodies and small interjections from the horns for that futuristic orchestral sound again.
Despite the inventive playing and composing, the real star of this album is producer David Rubinson. This has to be one of the most meticulously produced albums ever, with every bit of reverb, echo and volume boost coming together to make an absolute aural masterpiece.
by Easy Money
Nothing like it had ever been done. By the end of the 1960s, modern jazz had traveled a world away from its humble beginnings, having inspired as many non-jazz artists as it had produced stars. Keyboardist Herbie Hancock was a central part of that American jazz renaissance which saw not only the relatively young form come into its own as a truly viable art, but unexpectedly grow into something beyond even the bloody revolutions of John Coltrane, quiet coups of Miles Davis, and hostile takeovers of Tony Williams & John McLaughlin. Hancock's 1972 offering was an altogether new sound, and though its moods and textures had been gingerly approached by others (and Hancock himself on the previous Mwandashi),Crossings was a fully realized music come of age at just the right moment. "The new avant-garde has finally found a direction", he reflected in 1971, "but it's like a spectrum. It's not one direction; there are many and they all have to do with giving people an experience rather than just giving them a bunch of notes". This 'experience' set the tone for most of the important directions in jazz - and much music in general - that followed. A fresh voice of improvisation and adventure that began finding its way into almost every film, TV show, and jazz & fusion record. It was real, urban, alive, and it was terribly American.
Billy Hart's drums and the child's play of the band on various pan-African percussives create the drum conversation that opens 'Sleeping Giant', Hancock's electric piano eventually chiming in, Buster Williams' resonant upright bass rises and falls and things begin to heat up nicely. A quiet reflection at the 7-minute mark vibrates with the bitter experimentation of Schoenberg and evolves into bumpy funk before slowing again for a refrain of brass, the band throbbing with Benny Maupin's bass clarinet and Eddie Henderson's flugelhorn dueling with the bass & drums, ending softly after twenty-five minutes. Uneasy 'Quasar' settles on a complex Latin rhythm and then dissolves into cosmic pie, and 14-minute 'Water Torture' further explores the griot drum languages of the Mande and Soninke as it wanders and weeps through the streets of a sleeping city.
A transcendent experience that has grown over time into one of the most powerful, moving and innovative artistic statements of the modern era, and no music like it has since emerged.
by Atavachron
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