Herbie Hancock - Sextant (1973 Japanese CBS/Sony Vinyl LP)

Herbie Hancock - Sextant | Vinyl LP - 1973 Japanese CBS/Sony (SOPL-190, SX-74 Sound Series)

The Mwandishi band was earning $160 a week, travelling by van between gigs, setting up their own PA and tearing it down after every show. The music they were making had almost no commercial audience in the US, but it sounded like nothing else anyone was recording. "Rain Dance" opens with Dr. Patrick Gleeson's ARP 2600 synthesiser sending pulses across the stereo field while Hancock's clavinet (run through a Fender Fuzz-Wah and Echoplex) builds a repeating rhythmic figure underneath. Buck Clarke's congas enter. Billy Hart's drums lock in. Then Henderson's trumpet and Priester's trombones (he plays alto, tenor and bass trombone across the album) add melodic fragments that drift in and out of the texture. Buster Williams plays Fender bass with wah-wah and fuzz, the signal so heavily processed it sounds closer to a synthesiser than a bass guitar. Maupin switches between soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, piccolo flute and, on one track, a kazoo. "Hidden Shadows" is the most rhythmically direct piece, the closest thing to a groove on the album. "Hornets" takes the entire second side and refuses to resolve. It builds in layers, the density increasing until the instruments merge into a single churning mass, then pulls apart and starts building again.

This was the third album in the Mwandishi trilogy, following Mwandishi (1971) and Crossings (1972) on Warner Bros. It was Hancock's first release for Columbia. Within months, Hancock disbanded the sextet, kept only Benny Maupin, and recorded Head Hunters with an entirely new rhythm section. Head Hunters reached number 13 on the Billboard 200 and became the first jazz album to go platinum. Hancock later said he had spent too long "exploring the upper atmosphere of music" and needed to reconnect with the earth. The Mwandishi band's dissolution remains one of the sharpest stylistic pivots in jazz history.

This is the 1973 Japanese pressing on CBS/Sony SOPL-190, from the SX-74 Sound series, released the same year as the US original.