CROSSINGS

Other of the very few jazz rock or jazz albums I have been listening to. But this is another good point for a progressive rock appreciator to be in touch with jazz music. IMHO, Crossings, or even Herbie Hancock is much closer to pure jazz music than prog; so if you really like it, you will naturally get yourself close to traditional jazz.

Giant Sleeping is the main epic here. It longs for almost 25 minutes, and demands like all kind of jazz music expertise from its player. But there are something new here, that cannot be found in pure jazz. The congas present here add a kind of latin flavour that can be found only southward from Rio Grande. The way bassist Buster Williams enters and mix with drums and percussion makes a rhythm session very far away from traditional jazz. During the song, some new riffs appears, while other presented before many of the times does not return back or are only slightly remembered, not developed again. These are the moments when we see Herbie not like a pure jazz man, but someone making music with a lot of pieces found in progressive rock. And this is really what jazz rock/fusion is about !

There is also two songs penned by Bennie Maupin, and they present characteristics listed above. I do like a lot the keys used to present the riff in Quasar, this is a clear example how you can add jazz and rock in a caldron and create something new, not only a simple mix of two different things. And this is also why it deserves five stars, it is a perfect combination of jazz and rock, it is flawless and probably would correspond to what Miles Davis had in his mind while he recorded Bitches Brew?