Don't let the whole thing about "improvised music" fool you - this is not like an Ornette Coleman or Art Ensemble of Chicago disc. It's very structured and accessible - you wouldn't realize it was all improvised unless you read the liner notes.

It's a side of Herbie Hancock you probably haven't heard before. First, he's playing over Latin-tinged grooves. Second, it's rather minimalist, both in instrumentation and in the simplicity and repetitiveness of the melodies. That said, he really tears it up - this is one of my favorite Herbie records. Practically anyone who's into jazz in general or Herbie in particular would dig this side.

I am a jazz pianist and Herbie Hancock is a personal favorite of mine, and he is certainly one of the most versatile musicians to ever come out of jazz. His music and his playing is anywhere from ridiculously funky to absolutely beautiful to out there and crazy. This album, from 1963, most closely follows the third option. One has to wonder where this session came from; Hancock had found his first hit with "Watermelon Man" and spent his second session trying to duplicate that success, albeit with mixed results. This third session for Blue Note sounds nothing like the first two or almost anything in the Blue Note catalogue at that time. Stripped down to trio plus auxiliary percussion with Paul Chambers on bass, Willie Bobo on drums, and Osvaldo Martinez on auxiliary percussion, the group explores Latin grooves in a very subtle way that I can only label "concept-based post-bop." There aren't really any written tunes ("Mimosa" was a set of chord changes and the other tunes are completely improvised) so sketches are built more off of fragments and ideas born in the studio. For example, one tune features the bass playing a pedal tone for four bars followed by Hancock's improvisation in that key for sixteen bars. The music, while abstract, is oddly infectious through the rhythmic approach. In addition, Hancock was working with fairly "inside" musicians, especially Chambers, a first call bop musician. As a result, though free, this music is fairly conservative. Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of taste; it is controlled and in what many would call "good taste" but at the same time, sometimes that control inhibits the musicians from reaching the full potential of the wild and crazy things that *might* have been born. Thus, this was never able to reach the classic status of the great "out" sessions but it was also kept from descending into meaningless noise that happens when free jazz finds itself uninspired. Instead, it walks a middle path, a relatively safe (though still more adventurous than either of his prior two releases) "free" session which is very interesting, sometimes catchy, but not really a classic. I find it difficult to call any of this session to mind because there aren't memorable melodic moments; it's more about texture. I still enjoy this quite a bit, though, and anyone interested in Herbie Hancock would do well to check out this album to see the germ of his playing with Miles, or perhaps a road he chose not to take.

As another reviewer said, you wouldn't realize these compositions are improvised unless you read the liner notes. I first heard this album, original issue, in Santa Barbara in 1982, and its compositions have remained with me since. This music nourishes the mind, as well as the emotions. Listen closely to Succotash: each musical phrase is worthy of expansion into its own composition. Every improvising musician should own and listen to this album. If you appreciate improvisation at a high level, density, non-derivative, yet still accessible music, add Inventions & Dimensions to your collection.

This is one of the most experimental recordings I own: the group (a quartet) consists of Hancock on keys, Paul Chambers on bass; Willie Bobo drumming and Osvaldo "Chihuahua" Martinez playing percussion - you'll note that every instrument is part of the rhythm section. If that weren't enough, most the melodies and chords on this album were improvised, making it an irregular album. Musically, it's mostly Latin-jazz, almost sounding loungey at some points ("Succotash"; "Triangle") - that's where the record loses my interest. However, the genuine-sounding Latin is a treat for the ears: the furious "Jackrabbit" contrasts the smooth, lazy majesty of "Mimosa". The fact is that there's only so much you can do with just a rhythm section, and both "Jackrabbit" and "Mimosa" exhaust those possibilities instantly, making it tough to consider Inventions and Dimensions one of Hancock's better albums. So it's conceptually interesting, but conceptually interesting does not always equal classic.