Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles (2023 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series Vinyl LP)

Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles | Vinyl LP - 2023 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series (180g, Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio, Optimal Media GmbH)

• Herbie Hancock's fourth Blue Note album, recorded on 17 June 1964 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs; a quartet with Freddie Hubbard on cornet, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums — three of the four members of the Miles Davis Second Great Quintet's rhythm section, with Hubbard as the single horn
• Four Hancock originals including "Cantaloupe Island," sampled by UK jazz-rap group Us3 for "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" in 1993, and "The Egg," a 14-minute free improvisation that closes the album on entirely different terms
• 2023 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series, mastered from the original analogue tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed at Optimal Media GmbH on 180g vinyl

When Herbie Hancock went into Van Gelder Studio on 17 June 1964, he brought three musicians from the Miles Davis rhythm section: Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. The third Davis band member present was not Miles but Freddie Hubbard — and Hubbard, who played trumpet on virtually every other session of this period, played cornet on this one. The reason for the switch has not been fully documented, but the cornet's warmer, slightly brighter tone is audible across all four tracks. Alfred Lion produced; Rudy Van Gelder engineered.

Hancock had composed all four pieces over the preceding two years, building a set that moves from the controlled energy of "One Finger Snap" through the lush ballad "Oliloqui Valley" to "Cantaloupe Island" on Side B — a funky 16-bar groove built on a piano vamp that alternates between three minor chords — and finally to "The Egg," which runs to 14 minutes and functions as a free improvisation built on a repeated ostinato figure. "Cantaloupe Island" was sampled by the British jazz-rap group Us3 for "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" from Hand on the Torch (Blue Note, 1993), which reached the Top 10 in the US and became the most widely heard iteration of Hancock's composition outside the jazz world. Hancock has said he preferred the original 1964 arrangement to his later funk-era versions. The album was his fourth for Blue Note; Maiden Voyage would follow the next year. This 2023 pressing is mastered from the original analogue tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media GmbH.