Melt Your Veins

 

Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters [APJ 084 USA  2021 24-Bit FLAC]

As it is a Sunday evening, you usually get some jazz, this week you get two jazz albums. Both in similar styles (funky & innovative), however they vary geographically and in the quality of the finished product. After Donald Byrd last week, it only seemed right that Herbie should follow next.

Good copies of Head Hunters are extremely difficult to find these days, with Music On vinyl swamping the market with substandard product. I originally had in mind a 1977 Japanese repress from my usual source of Japanese vinyl, however without an obi, such records are not really worth the investment. So for the some cost (around fifty quid), I happened upon this 2021 repress on Chad Kassem's Analogue Productions label, imported from the US. 

This version is mastered from the original analogue reels and pressed onto superior quality vinyl in limited batches by Kassem's own Quality Record Pressings plant in Salina, Kansas. Unarguably, QRP are now one of the biggest and best pressing facilities in the US, where their attention to detail is unsurpassed. 

You will likely never hear a better sounding pressing of this album. 

A1 Chameleon

A2 Watermelon Man

B1 Sly

B2 Vein Melter