Herbie Hancock - Sextant (Album Review)

 

Herbie Hancock - Sextant

(1973)

My copy: 2023 reissue on lunar marble vinyl by Columbia and Sony Music Commercial Music Group.

Closing out Hancock’s Mwandishi era and preceding the more iconic Head Hunters by only a few months, Sextant travels deep into the cold vacuum of space where notions of jazz and funk are mere foreign echoes upon which future compositions are consulted out of novelty. 

It’s not surprising that Sextant was perceived as a flop when it released in 1973, as immediately the prodding electronic dots of “Rain Dance” whisk listeners away into a largely unheard of union between jazz and ambient music. Hancock undoubtedly borrows from Davis but dials into a stranger space-age landscape of curious melodic foliage through synthesizer player Patrick Gleeson. The theme is reinvention: the synth is constantly calculating, as if it were straining human music through some alien process, rebuilding in real-time with bubbling walls of effects. At the heart of all this is a series of human, rhythmic snapshots that wretch about by means of percussion and groaning bass to remind that this was in fact created by man. 

“Hidden Shadows” honks and grooves while washes of keys careen overtop. Later the song is inundated with an anima of instrumentally replicated animal sounds, from croaking bass to whooping woodwinds. The two thematic tones are now engaged in a deeper war: with hand percussion and funk elements pushing back against robotic whines and crackles as the band strengthens the jazz skeleton of the rhythm. Hancock’s own piano unleashes waves of malfunctioning, dissonant melody like some regressing android that spews confessions in an archaic language. The writing complicates and spotlights an oddly triumphant motif as heavenly vocal synths blanket the song at last. 

The whole B-side is dedicated to “Hornets” which digs in with tight cymbal work immediately, continuing to jeer in the voices of foreign animals as they cry and chirp from some esoteric bush. The low-end clambers as the piece swirls into multiple decadent breakdowns of watery synth - later foaming and raving with staccato pokes as the bass grovels at the basin of their afro-beat influence. This final collage bleeds, roars and finally rattles away with the cymbals just as it began 19 minutes earlier. 

Hancock’s vision with Sextant outpaced many critics of his era, as it predated concepts that would later be executed in countless alternative albums years later. At times Sextant rejects traditional pacing a bit too much, though its hardline dedication to sound experimentation makes it an exceptional piece deserving of modern acclaim.