Herbie Hancock – Empyrean Isles [1LP Classic Vinyl Series]

Herbie Hancock – Empyrean Isles [1LP Classic Vinyl Series]

Details

• Format: 1LP Vinyl, Album, Reissue, Classic Vinyl Series
• Catalogue Number: 4859562
• Barcode: 602448595621
• Genre: Jazz / Post-Bop / Hard Bop
• Label: Blue Note / Universal Music
• Originally Released: 29 June 1964
• Reissue Released: 2023
• Pressing: Classic Vinyl Series
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Empyrean Isles is Herbie Hancock's fourth album as a leader, recorded in June 1964 for Blue Note Records with a quartet comprising Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums — arguably the most gifted rhythm section working in jazz at that moment, all three of them also members of Miles Davis's second great quintet. The record was made at the height of the post-bop moment, when jazz had fully absorbed the lessons of hard bop and modal playing and was beginning to look toward something new, and Hancock's writing here captures that moment of maximum possibility with extraordinary clarity.

The album contains one of the most celebrated compositions in the Hancock catalogue: "Cantaloupe Island", a four-bar vamp of such rhythmic and harmonic elegance that it has since become a jazz standard of the first order, covered hundreds of times and later sampled to memorable effect by US3 in 1993. But the album's other three pieces — "One Finger Snap", "Oliloqui Valley", and the title track — are equally significant, demonstrating a compositional intelligence that was already distinctly Hancock's own. This Classic Vinyl Series reissue presents the album from a high-quality pressing designed for contemporary playback systems.

Tracklist

1. One Finger Snap
2. Oliloqui Valley
3. Cantaloupe Island
4. The Egg

Credits

• Herbie Hancock – Piano
• Freddie Hubbard – Trumpet
• Ron Carter – Double Bass
• Tony Williams – Drums
• Rudy Van Gelder – Recording Engineer
• Alfred Lion – Producer
• Label – Blue Note Records