Herbie Hancock

LP version. Secrets was released by Columbia in August 1976, a year after Man-Child, and it takes the electric funk of Herbie Hancock's mid-seventies records into a softer, roomier space. The grooves roll instead of punching, and the Fender Rhodes sits at the centre of nearly every arrangement. The guitars, a newcomer on the previous album, now carry much of the structure. Apart from the chanted hook of the opening track it is an instrumental record. For anyone who knows Head Hunters and Thrust, it shows where that language went next, toward texture and mood more than sheer drive.

Hancock produced the sessions in San Francisco with David Rubinson, keeping the core of his working band, with Paul Jackson on bass, James Levi on drums and Kenneth Nash on percussion. Bennie Maupin moves between soprano and tenor saxophone, saxello, lyricon and bass clarinet. Wah Wah Watson, the Motown session guitarist, adds talkbox and a Maestro sample-and-hold unit, next to Ray Parker Jr. on second guitar. Watson, born Melvin Ragin, co-wrote five of the seven pieces with Hancock, and Jackson shares credit on three of them. Hancock's own credits read like an inventory of 1976: Rhodes, Yamaha grand, Hohner clavinet, ARP Odyssey, ARP String Ensemble, Micro-Moog and an Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer, run through an Echoplex. Doin' It, written with Watson and Parker and cut with James Gadson on drums, opens the album with a loose vocal chant over a long mid-tempo vamp. Cantelope Island recasts Hancock's 1964 tune as a slow, swaying funk piece. The famous piano figure passes to electric keyboards, over a relaxed pulse with a Caribbean lilt. Side two is darker and more abstract. Spider and Swamp Rat are built on Jackson's knotted bass lines and Watson's choppy rhythm guitar, with synthesizer pads thickening the background. Maupin's own Sansho Shima closes the record in a quieter, more open register.

This is the Music On Vinyl edition (MOVLP1023, under licence from Columbia), issued in 2014 as a single 180 gram LP pressed in the EU.