1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 183. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1970)

 

I think if you’d said to me when I started this endeavour that I’d be looking forward to nearly two hours of jazz-rock fusion instrumental, I’d have been very surprised. If you’d said after Kind of Blue or Birth of the Cool that it would be a Miles Davis album, I’d have been more surprised. But I really liked his previous album on the list, In A Silent Way, and if it got me away from anything involving David Bleedin’ Crosby for a bit, all the better.

This is a bit funkier than In A Silent Way, but continues Davis’ blending of electric guitar and electric piano with more traditional jazz instruments (mainly trumpet, naturally). The piano parts in particular leap up and down like the stereotypical sound used to indicate a computer working in Seventies film and TV, forming an overlay over mostly pretty fast and steady rhythm from the bass and drums, over the top of which the trumpet, sometimes sax, sometimes guitar, pick out solos. At times it feels like there are layers of the piano underlay, all blending in to make a complex, but not overwhelming, mix of artful noise. There are usually at least two pianos, played by Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul, sometimes a third (Larry Young) joins in, hence the complexity.

As it’s jazz, it breaks apart, comes together, breaks apart again. The first track, which also forms a 20-minute side to one of the discs of the double album, is Pharoah’s Dance, a very funky boppy number, while side two’s Bitches Brew is a more fractured piece. The other tracks vary between these two, with Miles Runs The Voodoo Down being a nice mix of the two, a great funky jam that in the middle completely falls into bits and pieces of sounds, before the final track, Sanctuary, brings everything down to a smooth and gentle finish.

There’s a bonus track, Feio, on remastered versions, which is another slow and fragmented piece.

A couple of years ago I discovered binaural beats that are meant to aid concentration with ADHD, and there’s something to that in this music – the interweaving layers of rapid wandering piano with the grace elements on top never quite stay the same and become predictable, yet also follow enough of a pattern not to just become noise. The other thing it reminded me of is the music to the pinball animation from classic Seventies Sesame Street, you know the one – “One two three FOUR five/Six seven eight NINE ten/Eleven twelve”.

Sometimes with these albums I just happen to be in a receptive mood (or not), which can colour my perceptions, I’ve come to find. I always try to approach each one with the mindset of wanting to hear what it has to offer,but sometimes it lands, sometimes not. I think it helps that the mix is really good on this as well, meaning that all of the complex moving parts blend together into a coherent whole but without losing their individuality; it makes for a very interesting aural palette. Loved it. 

Yes. I loved a Miles Davis album.