Stretching out in 1965, with John Gilmore, Joe Chambers and co, two extra percussionists, and two bassists on one track. Abstract, fierce, textured, compelling.

Booker Ervin! Mira!

Dazzling music from 1969, way ahead of its time, by a nonet with Woody Shaw and Dizzy Reece on trumpets, Joe Farrell on reeds, woodwinds, and English horn, Bob Northern on French horn, Howard Johnson on tuba and bass clarinet, Ron Carter on bass. Fresh from Bitches Brew, Lenny White plays drums at just his second recording session; trombonist Julian Priester is a few months away from Mwandishi.
Sideways establishes Hill’s signature twist on Monk and Bud Powell, with its angular, sinewy restlessness, and Caribbean tang. The horns are crossly careering. The evocative title cut has classical, cinematic manners, but in the service of East of the River Nile mysticism. Plantation Bag is magnificent, delirious, epic funk, with Lenny White channelling Clyde Stubblefied, and Ron Carter dug in deep. Noon Tide tears way further eastwards, in the same urgent cohort as classics like Yusef Lateef’s Chang, Chang, Chang and Pete La Roca’s Dancing Girls. Cascade is precisely skittering and eruptive, with wonderful trumpet-playing. Yesterday’s Tomorrow is playful, both jaunty and rueful, undecided, to close.
The arrangements throughout are imperious; the playing is uniformly superb. “We had rehearsal time and a lot of studio time. Some of those songs, we did take 45 or take 50. We played them over and over and over, till we got a complete take just right.’‘
Knockout.

From 1969, with Harold Land, Stanley Cowell, Reggie Johnson, and Joe Chambers, coolly charting a path all their own, out of the tumultuous decade.

With Herbie, Joe Chambers and bassist Albert Stinson in 1967 (after Happenings). Smart, swinging, affective stuff. Theme From Blow Up gets a good seeing to.

From 1969, this first collaboration with Harold Land — questing but chilled post-bop — is probably the best.
Steeped in the compositions of Joe Chambers, the closer Pompeian is a tour de force; opening as a waltz, detouring into moody marimba.

With George Coleman, Joe Farrell, Pepper Adams, Wilbur Little, and Candido.

Recorded between Let Freedom Ring and One Step Beyond, it’s presumably the laidback presence of HJ hero Sonny Clark — who also contributes half the compositions — which tips the scales away from JM’s more screwface, outward-bound trajectory, towards good-old-fashioned, limber, bluesy hard bop. Though a throwback, cancelled at the time (and shelved for twenty years), it’s downright classic Blue Note now.