The pianist Marco Cafolla who leads the Glasgow-based band Mama Terra was given the green light by Jazz FM to remake a favourite album of his for their ‘Classic Album’ Series. He made a wise selection in Herbie Hancock’s HeadHunters and this is a subsequent ‘live’ version recorded at the Glasgow Jazz Festival in 2024. The album follows their 2023 debut The Summoned on the Acid Jazz label.

This is their second release on Eddie Pillar’s post-mod label featuring all the pieces on the pioneering disc with two more high-level Herbie compositions - ‘Cantaloupe Island’ and ‘Butterfly’ - thrown into the mix. This is a far more palatable version of Herbie’s edgy experimental synth-based funk-fuelled take on jazz; the band are on it but just for the love of it. Vocalist Rachel Lightbody’s wordless soprano commandingly states the tunes and makes occasional excursions into scat-land. Solid saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski jams it up with an R&B-jazz swagger for the large part, punctuated with Coltrane-ish ‘out’-bursts of intensity while Cafolla’s analogue keys work tends to inhabit the funky groove-jazz spaceways.

There’s much respect for the originals and an unpretentious vibe about the session although playing it safe can hardly be said to be in the spirit of the original. The live mix is very decent and well-balanced, but what works at a Jazz Festival late-nighter doesn’t necessarily have the same effect in audio recording format.