EDDIE HENDERSON — Realization (review)

EDDIE HENDERSON — Realization album cover Album · 1973 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
After being part of the early jazz-rock adventures with Mwandishi, Henderson went out on his own for a steaming hot trio of album in the first half of the 70’s, the first of which Realization owes much to Hancock’s band, to the point that the entire Mwandishi line-up plays on it, in addition to Lenny White (then Return To Forever). And indeed, if you’re looking for a successor to Sextant, Realization is the one to search for. Soooo, with Herbie, Bennie, Billy, Buster, Lenny and electronic wizard Pat Gleeson in tow, the mood is certainly very much Mwandishi-like, but slightly quicker, since we have a double-drummer line-up. The ambiance is lso slightly different, maybe due to the West-Coast Frisco recording location (where he was practicing medecine), recorded over two days in the late winter and produced by resident studio Drinkwater (can’t invent that name, uh?).

If the general mood of Realization is somewhat faster and more energetic than in Sextant, it’s also a bit more accessible, even if Gleeson’s electronic “bidouillages” are a bit more present. The two lengthy Libra tracks on the first side are often bordering on dissonance, but never really cross the barrier. Unfortunately, if Maupin’s bass clarinet is not sufficiently present on this album, Eddie Mganga’s brass instruments are well counter-balanced with Bennie Mwile’s wood instruments, but under the refereeing of Hancock’s Rhodes. Maupin’s Anua opens the flipside in the same kind of mood, but the short cosmic Spiritual Awakening is filled with spacey electronic wizardry, slowly leading in the Hancock-penned track Revelation title track thing, where Hart’s bows the contrabass for a few seconds.

Sooo, if you want to acquire this album in CD format, you’ll have no choice than to find the 2on1 Capricorn Years Anthology, where Realization is coupled with his next album Inside Out, but since these two are very similar in style, you probably won’t mind at all casting two shots from one stone. The only downside to this solution is that one of the two artworks gets sacrificed and that the succession of both albums so similar can be a bit lengthy and too much in one sitting. But nevertheless, this is a killer JR/F album that’s always reaching for the limits of your sanity, but never outreaching itself in heavy dissonances. Wild stuff, especially if Mwandishi’s three albums is your thing.
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