HERBIE HANCOCK

SOUND SYSTEM

  1/  Hardrock                                   (Hancock,Laswell,Showard)     6.08
  2/  Metal Beat                                 (Hancock,Laswell)             4.53
  3/  Karabali                                   (Hancock,Ponce)               5.17
  4/  Junku                                      (Hancock,Laswell,Suso,Dieng)  5.30
  5/  People Are Changing                        (Thomas)                      6.03
  6/  Sound-System                               (Hancock,Laswell,Suso)        5.51
  7/  Metal Beat (Extended Version)              (Hancock,Laswell)             6.45

          Recorded at Evergreen Studio, New York
          Additional recording at Garage Sale Recording, Los Angeles, Studio Media,
            Evanston, Illinois and Eldorado Recording, Los Angeles
          Produced by Bill Laswell/Material & Herbie Hancock
          Associate Producer: Tony Meilandt
          Reissue (1999) produced by Bob Belden

Herbie Hancock: Fairlight CMI (1,2,3,4,6), Rhodes Chroma (1,4), Apple IIe (1), Yamaha DX7 (1,2,4,5,6), Emu 4060 digital keyboard (1), piano (3,4,5), Memorymoog (4), clavinet (6); Bill Laswell: bass (1,4,6), DMX (1,2,4,6), tapes (1,4), shortwave (2); D.St.: turntables (1,2,6); Nicky Skopelitis: guitar (1,6); Henry Kaiser: guitar (1,2); Daniel Ponce: bata (1,3), bells (3), shekere (3); Anton Fier: Simmons drums (1,2,6), sound plates (1,2,6), cuica (1), cymbals (2), gongs (2), TR-808 (5), wood block (5), percussion (5), synare (6), tympani (6); Rob Stevens: XMD (1,4), Praxis processing (4); Will Alexander: Fairlight CMI programming (1,2,3,6); Foday Musa Suso: Dusunguni (2,4), balaphone (2), Kora (4,6), kalimba (4), guitar (6), talking drum (6); Wayne Shorter: Lyricon (2), soprano saxophone (3); Toshinori Kondo: speaker (2), trumpet (6); Aiyb Dieng: talking drum (2,4,6), chatan (2,6), bells (2,6), chantan (4), don don (4), cowbell (4); Bernard Fowler: voice (2), vocals (3,5), vocal arrangement (3,5); Hamid Drake: cymbals (3,6).

          1984 - CBS/Columbia (USA), FC 39478 (Vinyl)
          1984 - CBS (UK), CBS 26062 (Vinyl)
          1984 - Columbia (USA), CK 39478 (CD)
          1992 - Columbia/Sony (USA), COL  471236 2 (CD)
          1999 - Columbia/Legacy/Sony, CK 65961 (CD)

Note: The 1999 reissue contains an interview with Bill Laswell about the album.
Note: The 1999 version is the only to contain track 7.

REVIEWS :

After "Rockit" became a hit, Hancock knocked off another album with Laswell in exactly the same style ("Hardrock" is shockingly similar). Most of the same cast of characters is carried over from Future Shock, except that Beinhorn is gone: D.St. and Ponce, plus frequent Laswell collaborator Ayb Dieng, and Nicky Skopelitis returns to his usual guitar after being confined to vocals on Future Shock. There are a couple of nice surprises along the way (Foday Musa Suso adds prominent kora and kalimba to "Junku"; Hancock and Wayne Shorter go acoustic on "Karabali") but overall it's a formulaic, cynical offering for the whole family to avoid.

1 1/2 stars out of 5.

David Bertrand Wilson (courtesy of the Wilson and Alroy's Record Reviews website)