Headhunters

This album is hugely popular and widely loved for its joyful funkyness. It's one of the (if not "the") best selling jazz albums of all time. It's pretty accessible stuff - It's also more sophisticated than many critics have suggested - the solos are long and often quite melodically complex, although this is always obscured by the rock-solid grooves. Hancock was accused of selling out, but it's clear from both this album's immediate predecessors (Sextant, Crossings) and as far back as Watermelon Man on Takin' Off and Cantaloupe Island on Empyrean Isles that Herbie was working towards this from the start, and that there was always a commercial / accessible side to his playing and writing. Sure, it's not the most profound music Hancock ever consigned to record, based as it is mostly on simple, catchy grooves, but in terms of sheer joyfulness it's hard to beat, and it's also a much more successful fusion of jazz and funk than some of the other things emerging at this time (like Miles Davis's On the Corner).It also represented the last truly innovative Hancock album. The follow-up, Thrust, was a carbon copy; ever after Hancock's albums were divided between bland, commercial product (Future Shock and its ilk), and explicit attempts to re-create his 1960s style (VSOP and the other acoustic albums) without ever moving on from it. Herbie is a great pianist but I feel that of all of Miles's surviving superstar ex-sidemen (Corea, McLaughlin, Shorter, Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette, Keith Jarrett etc) he has been the least successful in really transcending the work he did with Miles.

Having reached that peculiar age where there would appear to be more past than future I have embarked upon a project of back tracking all the music that has affected me in some way throughout the yearsThis amazing and boundary busting album from the early 1970s does not disappoint on re hearing, indeed the sounds from Mr Hancock and co transported me back to a carefree summertime with the intensity that true nostalgia can bring.The album is a jazz funk oriented blast that satisfies every one of my musical molecules; with just four tracks the music can explore and experiment without a trace of longeuse

Great audio quality for someone who refuses to pay the price for the vinyl. Sonys super mapping really seems to make it shine and not just a gimmick.

Perhaps my fabourite progresssive jazz album.

Bought for Son he loves the Album