The cover for this album really looks like it belongs in the Nineties, with its feel of Acid House rave, although that’s actually Hancock in a modified African Mask (from Ivory Coast), not an acid house smiley.
The music, however, is a jazz-funk fusion and some of it would work really well as trance music in the chill-out section of a rave. There are four tracks – the lengthy opening track Chameleon is a very trip-hop beat-driven groove with various jazzy soloing over the top – Hancock on a variety of keyboards, Bennie Maupin (not to be confused with Bernie Taupin) on a variety of woodwind. There’s a great part where all the instruments fall away apart from drummer Harvey Mason and bassist Paul Jackson just giving a simple funky groove, while Hancock and Maupin provide patches of sound before building back up to the main tune. Really, really, good.
There’s a version of Hancock’s own jazz standard Watermelon Man which is nothing like the original, a very broken apart version, the musical equivalent of a Picasso. There’s only the barest glimpse of the “Heeeeeyyyyy, Watermelon Man” motif from the original. Sly is more jazz than funk, with the front instruments guiding the music and the rhythm following more, at least compared to Chameleon. And finally Vein Melter is a glorious bit of slow spacy trance to round out the album.
It all sounds quite simple, but it’s one of those sounds that I really like; enough to switch your brain off and lose yourself in the groove. Hancock borrows a lot from African music, with percussionist Bill Summers credited with all manner of instruments that an ignorant European like myself would need to look up – balafon, cabasa, shekere, surdo, etc.. These are mostly drums, shakers, and cowbells. Watermelon Man is book-ended by an unusual woodwind sound that is actually Summers playing beer bottles, meant to evoke the hindewhu singing/whistling style of the Pygmies.
Well, I did ask for some less Eurocentric music. This was excellent.
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