The room › Artists › Herbie Hancock
Where to start with Herbie Hancock
Start with Thieves In The Temple — The New Standard, 1996. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 16 Herbie Hancock tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 16 Herbie Hancock tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 16 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
It is spread thin and wide — 16 tracks across 14 different records, which is a browsing history rather than a shelf of favourites.
The dates here run from 1967 to 2026. They are the dates attached to the releases in this room rather than recording dates, so the later ones are likely reissues — but 59 years is still more than one version of the artist.
The head/body knob swings 58 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Thieves In The Temple — The New Standard, 1996. Of the 11 Herbie Hancock tracks here that have actually been listened to, this one sits closest to the average of them across the four knobs the room runs on. The other 5 arrived carrying the default for their genre, and averaging a placeholder in would move the centre towards nothing. It is the least surprising thing among the tracks that were read, which is what an entry point should be.
If you want the cerebral end
A Case of You — River: The Joni Letters, 2007. The lowest head/body reading of any Herbie Hancock track in the room (22 out of 100). This is as far towards cerebral as the collection goes.
If you want the groove end
Karabali — Sound-System, 1984. The highest head/body reading here, at 80 out of 100 — a 58-point swing across the collection towards groove.
Where Herbie Hancock sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Herbie Hancock's average coordinates and the range they cover.
| Knob | Average | Range | Low → high |
|---|---|---|---|
| mood | 54 | 30–70 | melancholy → euphoric |
| energy | 53 | 20–75 | ambient → driving |
| density | 54 | 30–70 | sparse → wall |
| head · body | 56 | 22–80 | cerebral → groove |
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Secrets | 1976 | 2 |
| Crossings | — | 2 |
| Directstep | 1997 | 1 |
| The Blow-Up | 1967 | 1 |
| Mwandishi | 1971 | 1 |
| Sound-System | 1984 | 1 |
| Man-Child | 1975 | 1 |
| River: The Joni Letters | 2007 | 1 |
| Blow-Up Soundtrack | 1967 | 1 |
| The New Standard | 1996 | 1 |
| Dedication | 2026 | 1 |
| Future Shock | 1983 | 1 |
| Sextant | 1973 | 1 |
| V.S.O.P. | 1977 | 1 |
Every Herbie Hancock track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Bring Down The Birds | Blow-Up Soundtrack | 1967 |
| The Naked Camera | The Blow-Up | 1967 |
| Ostinato (Suite For Angela) | Mwandishi | 1971 |
| Quasar | Crossings | 1972 |
| Rain Dance | Sextant | 1973 |
| Steppin' In It | Man-Child | 1975 |
| Cantelope Island | Secrets | 1976 |
| Doin' It | Secrets | 1976 |
| Hang Up Your Hang Ups - Live | V.S.O.P. | 1977 |
| Rough | Future Shock | 1983 |
| Karabali | Sound-System | 1984 |
| Thieves In The Temple | The New Standard | 1996 |
| I Thought It Was You | Directstep | 1997 |
| A Case of You | River: The Joni Letters | 2007 |
| Sleeping Giant | Crossings | 2018 |
| Maiden Voyage (excerpt) | Dedication | 2026 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Herbie Hancock's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Miles Davis — jazz, 34 tracks
- Where to start with ESKA — jazz, 10 tracks
- Where to start with Jack DeJohnette — jazz, 10 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Herbie Hancock as a solo artist, from the United States and born in 1940. Its contributors tag the artist classical, jazz, electro, funk and fusion. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Herbie Hancock tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 16, across 14 albums. 16 of them carry a date, running from 1967 to 2026. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. 11 of these 16 tracks have been read that way. The other 5 arrived with the default for their genre and nobody has listened to them yet, so they are left out of the centre, the ends and the spread quoted above.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 16 of these 16 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.