Herbie Hancock's new album, Future 2 Future (Transparent Music 500112, 2001), has received a lot of attention from the jazz community. So far, reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. David Adler of allaboutjazz.com calls Future 2 Future "[Hancock's] most powerful and relevant music in years." Jazz torchbearer Downbeat Magazine's Oct. 1 issue agrees, saying it is "a triumph [.] This is a Rolodex album that really works." Vibe nods approvingly as well, calling it "a techno fantasy that balances jazz subtleties with drum'n'bass, ambient, and hip hop textures."
Naturally, after reading all of this praise, I bought the album. It wasn't much of a stretch either; as a jazz pianist, Herbie Hancock has inevitably been one of the greatest influences on my playing, along with Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans and others. I could hardly wait to peel the polywrap off his newest opus.
Boy, was I disappointed.
Future 2 Future, according to Herbie Hancock, is a "bold statement of creativity possibilities for the 21st century." Therefore, if we are to take Herbie's statement at face value, Future 2 Future is an album that includes important additions to the jazz lexicon which will define the next 100 years. Accordingly, if his statement is true, this much can be said for the jazz of the next 100 years:
Grooves will be repetitive and disingenuous.Songs will not be harmonically inventive and will usually be built from a single chord.
The electric bass will cease to be a poetic instrument, and it will be replaced by the acoustic bass.
The turntable will assume a role in the jazz ensemble equal to that of the horn player.
Jazz will no longer be able to ignore the influence of the techno/dance idiom.
Certainly, these properties do not bode well for the future of jazz. While I support the incorporation of turntables and techno elements into jazz and have experimented with them myself, these two fortunate developments are not enough to balance the endemic harmonic and rhythmic homogeneity which plague this album.
Hancock's primary collaborator on the album, producer and bassist Bill Laswell, may be partially to blame. Hancock last collaborated with Laswell to acclaim on his 1983 album which features sampled playing from the eponymous drummer from before his untimely 1997 death, is similarly destroyed by Dana Bryant's spoken word contributions, which are worthy of an open-mike night at XandO, but not much more.
Williams' talent, though captured at a different time and place, is only one of many that is wasted on this poorly focused romp through the techno toolbox. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter contributes some routine blowing on "Tony Williams," "Be Still" and "Virtual Hornets." Drummer Jack DeJohnette is used merely as a human groove box, never to solo and rarely abandoning the rhythmic status quo. Bassist Charnett Moffett - who incidentally is no stranger to the hip-hop/jazz amalgam, having worked in Courtney Pine's band - is technically astonishing as usual, and his solo saves "Virtual Hornets" from being a total loss. But his efforts are too sparsely distributed to resuscitate this cadaverous dance album.
Where the jazz artists disappoint, the transplants are simply lost. Turntablists Rob Swift and Grandmixer DXT appear on "The Essence" and "This is Rob Swift," respectively. While Swift shreds faster and more accurately than most anyone in the business, it takes a landmark Hancock Rhodes solo to break up the monotony of the track. DXT's work is remarkably dated - and it's pretty hard to sound dated on a turntable. The album also hosts world music delegates (Karsh Kale and Imani Uzuri) and names from the electronica scene (GiGi, A Guy Called Gerald and Carl Craig). However, nothing can save them from the undertow of this stunningly disoriented and confusing effort. Let's hope this is not the future of jazz.
The author can be contacted at sekerke@jhu.edu.
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