Herbie Hancock, River: The Joni Letters

Small world sometimes. I just picked this up a few weeks ago. I liked Herbies Jazz Moods/Round Midnight so I thought I'd buy the "2008 Album of the year". Definitely not recorded as well as JMRM. The piano sounds strident.

When Jone heard it she probably cried a river. :-)

I've got the LP version and it doesn't sound overly compressed to me. I do hear spots of compression here and there, but not the kind of broad compression over the whole spectrum that's ruining many recordings theses days.

Musically I enjoyed it very much. I'm not a big fan of Joni's voice, so I love others interpreting her wonderful songs.

Dave

Several months ago I listened to preview clips at AMG and other music sites and concluded this was not an album I wanted.

I'm not judging sonics, having listened only via internet but musically I heard enough. Like Detlof, I think It's way too commercial and too "smooth Jazz."

I listened to the first two tracks again last night on my headphone system which consists of Sennheiser HD600 phones, ASL MG II tubed amp, and a Cambridge D500SE cd player. It sounded even worse. Listening through the phones, it sounded like a lot of digital circa 1985, brittle, etched, crystaline would be apt adjectives. The vocal mix on Edith and the Kingpin is especially hashy and spitty. I couldn't take any more.

Disregarding the sonics, the music doesn't inspire me either.

RHljazz. I'm listening to the disc as I write this post. The instruments don't sound compresses at all but something was going on with the vocals
I started reading the credits and all the vocals were recorded at other studios. Avatar studio in NY is where all the instrumental was recorded
I think Herbie was creative and trying to give some of the vocals a more classic sound and possible had them recorded on analog tape? The sax work seems suspect to some analog work. I could be just the different techniques at each studio that recorded the vocals tracks 1and2 sound more analog but track 4 sounds very forward almost standing in front of me and singing. Not my favorite Herbi work

Ed