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Herbie Hancock: Head Hunters

Herbie Hancock: Head Hunters

Analogue Productions  CAPJ 084 SA

Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid

Jazz


Herbie Hancock


A defining masterpiece of jazz funk, now on Hybrid Multichannel SACD!

Includes the original Stereo & Quadraphonic (4.0 Surround) Mixes!

There are few artists in the music industry who have had more influence on acoustic and electronic jazz and R&B than Herbie Hancock.

In 1963, Miles Davis invited Hancock to join the Miles Davis Quintet. During his five years with Davis, Herbie recorded many classics with the jazz legend including ESP, Nefertiti and Sorcerer, and later on he made appearances on Davis' groundbreaking In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew.

Hancock's own solo career blossomed on Blue Note, with classic albums including Maiden Voyage, Empyrean Isles and Speak Like a Child. After leaving Davis' fold, Herbie put together a new band called The Headhunters and, in 1973, recorded Head Hunters. Head Hunters was a pivotal point in Hancock's career, bringing him into the vanguard of jazz fusion. Hancock had pushed avant-garde boundaries on his own albums and with Miles Davis, but he had never devoted himself to the groove as he did on Head Hunters. Drawing heavily from Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield and James Brown, Hancock developed deeply funky, even gritty, rhythms over which he soloed on electric synthesizers, bringing the instrument to the forefront in jazz. It had all of the sensibilities of jazz, particularly in the way it wound off into long improvisations, but its rhythms were firmly planted in funk, soul and R&B, giving it a mass appeal that made it the biggest-selling jazz album of all time (a record which was later broken).

Jazz purists, of course, decried the experiments at the time, but Head Hunters still sounds fresh and vital four decades after its initial release, and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul and hip-hop.

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Recording
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Analogue recording

Mastered at Sterling Sound by Ryan Smith
Tracks
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1. Chameleon
2. Watermelon Man
3. Sly
4. Vein Melter
Comments (1)
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Comment by Downunderman - September 18, 2016 (1 of 1)

There have been 3 other SACD issues of this album prior to this one - Not having heard any of them I am not in a position to make any comparisons.

The other thing I can't comment on is the quad mix. I'm a stereo only guy.

What I can tell is that this version sounds very good. A pretty typical Analogue Productions SACD master in that regard.

Hailing as it does from the early 70's it has that warm analogue tape sound and a well developed sound stage with well separated instruments.

If you have overlooked picking the album up before now, then now's your chance. You are unlikely to be disappointed, sonically or musically.

ADDENDUM - I managed to get my hands on the Japanese version issued in 2007.

I have been surprised by how different sounding they are.

The Japanese version is much more sanitised sounding compared to the organic (almost tubey) sounding AP disc. The AP version also digs much deeper into the source tapes. So there is much more inner detail present.