Herbie Hancock – Crossings (1972/2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Cover art included, liner notes not included

The 1971 album, remastered from the original analogue tape. Currently out-of-print in the U.S.

Crossings is jazz pianist Herbie Hancock’s tenth studio album originally released in 1972. The record was the second during Hancock’s Mwandishi period, which featured a string of albums that focused on experimental electronics. Crossings was the first album to feature the newest member to Hancock’s group, synthesizer player Patrick Gleeson.

With the frenzied knocking of what sounds like a clock shop gone berserk, Crossings takes the Herbie Hancock Sextet even further into the electric avant-garde, creating its own idiom. Now, however, the sextet has become a septet with the addition of Dr. Patrick Gleeson on Moog synthesizer, whose electronic decorations, pitchless and not, give the band an even spacier edge. Again, there are only three tracks — the centerpiece being Hancock’s multi-faceted, open-structured suite in five parts called “Sleeping Giant.” Nearly 25 minutes long yet amazingly cohesive, “Sleeping Giant” gathers a lot of its strength from a series of funky grooves — the most potent of which explodes at the tail-end of Part Two — and Hancock’s on-edge Fender Rhodes electric piano solos anticipate his funk adventures later in the ’70s. Bennie Maupin’s “Quasar” pushes the session into extraterrestrial territory, dominated by Gleeson’s wild Moog effects and trumpeter Eddie Henderson’s patented fluttering air trumpet. Even stranger is Maupin’s “Water Torture,” which saunters along freely with splashes of color from Hancock’s spooky Mellotron and fuzz-wah-pedaled Fender Rhodes piano, Gleeson’s electronics, and a quintet of voices.

Tracklist:

1. Herbie Hancock – Sleeping Giant (24:45)
2. Herbie Hancock – Quasar (07:22)
3. Herbie Hancock – Water Torture (13:54)