Future 2 Future

Herbie Hancock, Herbie Hancock / Michael Brecker / Roy Hargrove | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 25, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Transparent Music
• ASIN: B00005NHUJ
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #145,406 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #59 in Music > Indie Music > Jazz > Jazz Fusion

Track Listings

1. Kebero

2. Wisdom

3. The Essence (featuring Chaka Khan)

4. This is Rob Swift

5. Black Gravity

6. Tony Williams

7. Be Still

8. Ionosphere

9. Kebero (part 2)

10. Alphabeta

11. Virtual Hornets

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

For more than four decades, the Grammy award-winning jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock has given us a number of pop hits, including "Watermelon Man," "Chameleon," and "Rockit." On this CD, Hancock welcomes the 21st century by putting his distinctive stamp on drum & bass, hip-hop, and world-music beats. Joined by saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassists Charnett Moffett and Bill Laswell, and drummer Jack DeJohnette, Hancock and crew deliver some intriguing licks on these popular rhythms. The two top compositions on this project are "The Essence," with R&B diva Chaka Khan, which borrows a bass lines from Miles Davis's "Ife," and "Tony Williams," a searing mainstream tribute to the legendary drummer. Throughout, Herbie Hancock puts a jazzy vibe into everything that he plays. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Product Description

From Transparent Music, Future 2 Future captures Herbie's take on the new progressive music from the DJ/Club culture - hip-hop, drum-and-bass, downtempo. The project reunites Hancock with famed musical architect Bill Laswell. Together, this team earned a Grammy for 'Rockit' and a platinum record from its parent album Future Shock.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars New Directions In Jazz, September 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Future 2 Future (Audio CD)

Future 2 Future reunites Herbie Hancock with producer Bill Laswell. You may recall that Hancock and Laswell teamed up together to produce their Grammy winning "Rockit" almost twenty years ago. Future 2 Future avoids the electronica from the Rockit days and relies on Rock, Jazz, Hip Hop and World Music influences. More than half the tracks on this CD include vocals or the spoken word. Most notable of these is "The Essence" which features Chaka Khan's vocals and fine piano work from Hancock. Another standout is Hancock's tribute to Tony Williams. This track includes sampled drum tracks from Williams and some of the finest tenor sax playing from Wayne Shorter since his Weather Report days. The core band includes Charnett Moffett on acoustic bass, Bill Laswell on electric bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Wayne Shorter on sax. Herbie Hancock keyboard playing icludes some of his best Fender Rhodes output in years. Pick up this CD if your interested in hearing someone who is trying to take jazz into new and differant directions.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best Contemporary Herbie since 1983, December 6, 2001

By 

Scott Woods (Columbus, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Future 2 Future (Audio CD)

When deciding whether or not one should purchase a newly released Herbie Hancock CD one has to be very clear about which Herbie fan they are: a) the traditional jazz Hancock fan (best exemplified by a more than passing appreciation of albums like "Maiden Voyage" or "Speak Like A Child"), b) contemporary jazz Hancock fan (exemplified by more than a passing appreciation of albums like "Headhunters" and "Future Shock"), or c) a mixture of both. Hancock is a chameleon of styles, forms and histories, and if you're not careful you could pick up the Miles Davis-ian "Inventions and Dimensions" instead of the Kraftwerk-like "Perfect Machine". All that said, this is a record for the b-style fan, and is probably his best offering in this regard since the very good "Future Shock" in 1983.

We've been subjected to some questionable records in this field in the last 15 years from Hancock, most notably "Dis is da drum", but this record seeks less to re-establish Hancock as a fixture on MTV as it does to show new audiences that he's able to do anything, and do it with class and history ever-present. In his corner he has teamed up with the ever-playful-yet-intense Bill Laswell on production and has gone beyond the "Hey! I know some hot undergound acts!" meanderings of other (and sometimes his own) records and found his voice in the styles presented. Hancock plays around grooves, not just bashed out drum machine riffs, and uses artists not as salad dressing (as on "Drum"), but as fitting compliments to the songs offered. I have to admit I was scared when I saw DJ Rob Swift and dance producers Carl Craig and A Guy Called Gerald in the credits, but they work (when the songs are actually good - track 5, "Black Gravity" springs to mind - and when Hancock isn't buried too deep in his own tracks) and the record carried throughout it a sense of daring (with dashes of drum-n-bass, downtempo and hip-hop but all smoothly done and with nice, Marc Carey-like flourishes throughout...which were originally mastered by Hancock back in the 70s in the first place) while giving us some Hancock chops and riffs reminiscent of his Mwandishi period. Good stuff here, folks. Every track doesn't sing, but it's the best "ulterior" Herbie you've heard in a long time. Fusion resurfaces in fine form here enough to justify the purchase IF YOU'RE INTO THE FORM ALREADY. If you're not sure, try some per-1980 Lonnie Liston Smith or Marc Carey ("Rhodes Ahead" preferably) then come back for this.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I think this is a work of art., January 31, 2005

By 

Tunnelpet "justindr660" (Forestville, CA, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Future 2 Future (Audio CD)

I'm not sure. I think this is a great work of art. To hear such a great musican working with some very contemporary arrangements....this thing really turns me on. I was driving with that drum and bass with Herbie playing on it...man. This is bad. I mean. Plus with this strange "wisdom of the future" concept going on. Guy Called Gerald? Listen to that 24 Hour Party People thing..."Voodoo Ray" sounds like a reexamination of indigineous perpective in a post-modern frame-work...and that was in 1987..(after that we got FSOL ..but I suppose Peter Gabriel's Security and My Life in the Bush of ghosts does some of that too..)..but with that "house"thing..you get Coil's "solar lodge"...I don't know man....In a way..THIS piece seems like a group of musicians that have been decades beyond of their contemporaries joining to together to check out "today" ..which just happens to be hot as hell and cool. but...I would like to see another project like this where pure feeling and having confidence in contempoary styles like drum and bass,etc...they can even feel free to even move past that. I think that is something Miles Davis would do. i also think this record is something that Miles davis would have liked very much actually. But...it is pretty intellectual...I don't think it is mainstream. Interesting that Drum and Bass is "mainstream" for these guys. I think this could be a required disc for musicains working with electronics these days. I did enjoy burning my tongue on this.