time to reengage

I've been shying away from Herbie Hancock after having his Fat Albert Rotundu (lala) as my default background music for nearly three months, but now it is time to reengage. I don't think I've ever listened to Sextant (lala)before. I like how it lurches back and forth over those brittle bones of a beat, shaping Bitches Brew fusion into something a little more digestible without completely neutering it. Sure, "Hidden Shadows' is a little heavy on the Dr. Who sound effects, but it works. "Hornets" is a thing of devastating modal jazz funk beauty - sax and guitar and bass all chattering like talk on the street over the rush of the song, arguing, laughing, boasting, hollering.

I have listened to The Final Cut (lala)precisely once before long ago in my nearly four decades, but for the last week or two, there has been a little nagging voice telling me to give it another spin. I went through the requisite Pink Floyd phase in college but this is one I never had, I only knew "The Fletcher Memorial Home" for the melancholy English surrealism in the video that was in heavy rotation on Night Flight.



Whatever my subconscious was trying to do with this suggestion is lost on me. It's a bittersweet record filled with beautiful textures occasionally disrupted by that same Roger Waters scream, but otherwise it passed through like a cloudy melancholy stream. Too bad the Kinks have not jumped on the digital bandwagon, or I'd be able to flip over to a band that does the same thing with greater delicacy and finesse.

I discovered Soft Machine's Third (lala) in a post about a year ago before I was willing to admit that I liked prog rock, and it still stands as one of my favorites of this obtuse strain of music.