With a swirl of jazz, funk and squelching new synth tones, Herbie Hancock’s Thrust is a forty minute trip to a different planet...
Directly following his 1973 groundbreaking Head Hunters album (itself the embodiment of a Sunday Classic), 1974’s Thrust is an album of supreme funk, fusion and quite some technical invention. Alongside the majority of the Head Hunters band, Hancock took to San Francisco’s Wally Heider Studios (the go-to location for the blossoming fusion scene) with longtime collaborator David Rubinson and a formidable arsenal of emerging keyboard-based technology. Utilising synths that were literally just hitting the market - the ARP Odyssey, ARP Soloist, ARP String Ensemble - and a Fender Rhodes electric piano, Thrust has such an evocative sound, rich in some of the fusion movements most sonically ambitious aesthetics.
Classically trained, Herbie Hancock has long been regarded as one of the most innovative composers and arrangers in jazz. He was a huge part of Miles Davis’ progression through bop, subsequently exploring modal jazz, funk and even electro and hip-hop throughout his own career. The fusion period though really was wildly creative, with moments of remarkable technical complexity (in particular on "Actual Proof"), spirituality and long-form and deep-rolling grooves to bathe in. 
Two sides, four tracks and forty minutes of remarkably focused music. There are moments of more mellow atmospherics (especially on the sublime "Butterfly") and the way the LP is bookended by the two high-energy jazz-funk high watermarks of "Palm Grease" and “Spank-A-Lee” makes Thrust one of those albums that you can gladly just keep flipping and spinning.
At Drift, we aren’t the kind of guys to judge a book by its cover, but Rob Springett’s iconic sleeve painting really does articulate this wonderful album remarkably well in just a 12” canvas. A studious and sharply dressed Hancock - using just a console of keys - flies a spaceship across a vivid alien vista, with soft, smoky reds and pinks wrapping Aztec-esque stairs. Guys, this really is to the clouds and beyond!
Thrust was futuristic when it dropped fifty years ago, and it still feels strangely modern and alien today. Wherever he channeled it from, absolutely nothing is wasted and man alive does it ever still groove hard.