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.