'Bitches Brew'
by Miles Davis
(1970)
Perhaps, alongside the likes of Elvis' Sun Recordings and The Beatles 'Revolver', one of the most important releases in the history of late-20th century popular music, 1970's 'Bitches Brew' marked a new chapter in the story of both it's genre and it's creator, simulteneously confirming the burgeoning fusion movement eminating from the USA whilst also preceding an incredibly fertile six-year period for it's maker. No more smooth late-night jazz or classical trimmings.
Miles Davis's extraordinary electric period had begun.
As the 1960's wore on, it was becoming increasingly clear to some that traditional jazz music was being overshadowed by the emerging force of white rock. The English invasion, the rise of The Beatles and the psychedelic rock scene had brought a new experimental vigour into the music scene, and for most of the era's young people jazz was simply not the happening thing any more, chained down as it was by history and convention. Rock was more exciting, more visceral and more dangerous, and groups like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Doors and Jefferson Airplane personified both the brash excess and experimental mindset that lay at the heart of it's appeal. With this in mind, pioneers such as Tony Williams, Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders stepped forward, cooking up their own evolutionary brand of jazz, achieved by carefully incorporating various rock elements into their compositions. Thus the fusion movement was born.
Though earlier works such as 'Water Babies' and 'Fillies De Kilimanjaro' hinted towards this new sound, Miles Davis was by no means the very first jazz name to began experimenting. With 'Bitches Brew' however, he made the movement a viable, critical-and-ocmmercial reality, brilliantly blending the colours, textures and tones of jazz within a heavy, dissonant, free-form spectrum, flecked all the while with the pinched strains of psychedelic rock, electric keyboards and Hendrixian guitars wailing away at Davis' instruction. This was both jazz and rock at the furthest limits of their respective sonic boundaries, and as progressive in nature and as the genre's other, more obvious, founding fathers, such Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Yes.
The sessions for 'Bitches Brew' commenced during the summer of 1969 under the auspices of Columbia Records and producer Teo Macero, the noted saxophonist and composer who had already produced Dave Brubeck's seminal 1959 album 'Time Out'. Davis was loose and brash and up for the challenge, accompanied by many of his prodigiously-gifted cohorts. The likes of Jack DeJohnette(drums), Joe Zawinul(electric piano), Wayne Shorter(soprano sax), Chick Corea(electric piano), John McLoughlin(electric guitar), Dave Holland(bass) and Billy Conham(drums) numbering amongst his significant auditory entourage, playing off one another for hours on end. However, it would be the way the studio was utilised that made 'Bitches Brew' so remarkable. Using splicing techniques, tape loops, echo effects and double-and-triple-tracking, Macero and Davis shaped the album in a way that was, for the time, completely revolutionary. Influenced by the 'musique concrete' innovators of the 1940's and 1950's, tracks such as 'Pharoah's Dance' featured more than 18 different tape edits, with certain beats, loops and rhythmic sections fused to create a dissonant, multi-layered effect that lends the music an almost mystical electronic-and-experimental ambience.
Recorded at New Yorks 30th Street studios and appearing in the spring of 1970, 'Bitches Brew' caused a storm of controversy upon it's initial release. Some saw it as a new path to a new music, an album brimming with innovation and style, whilst others saw it as nothing more than flash betrayal of jazz's long and glorious past, the rock influences overshadowing all else. Certainly the musicians who performed on it had little or no idea what they were actually doing at the time, with Davis pulling together his cast of players at extremely short notice and giving few, if any, instructions, therefore adding to the album's overall mystique. He would oversee and perform on almost all of the material on 'Bitches Brew', with the exception of British guitarist John McLaughlin's brief, eponymously-titled, four-and-a-half-minute piece, though his reputation for producing cool, melodic compositions was nowhere to be seen; this was powerful, explosive, freeform music filled with passion and adventure, the very antithesis of his previous albums.
The eventual legacy left by 'Bitches Brew' would be extraordinary, however, as Davis produced a series of scintillating electric jazz-rock odyssey's between the years 1969 and 1975, a period otherwise known as his highly-creative 'electric' phase which still to this day is the cause of so much debate and conjecture both inside and outside of the jazz and rock worlds. 'Bitches Brew' would be followed by the likes of 'On The Corner', 'Get Up With It' and 'Big Fun', whilst a host of incendiary live albums, many of which were recorded in New York(such as 'Dark Magus', 'Live At The Fillmore East' 'Live Evil' and 'Black Beauty') adapted the studio material into even longer, more progressive and more experimental structures that gave vent to Davis' everlasting urge to bush the boundaries of 'fusion' as far as he possibly could. In the wake of these recordings and performances, meanwhile, groups such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Nucleus and Weather Report sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic, displaying their own firey brands of jazzed-up rock music. For the third time in his career, Davis had forged yet another new movement.
A piece of incredible power, emotion and extreme instrumental prowess, 'Bitches Brew' is the big daddy of electric jazz albums. It is by no means a pleasant listen upon first inspection, yet, with subsequent visits, the music begins to take on it's own shape, with the twinkling keyboards, brief guitar rips, psyched-trumpet howls and improvisational brass bursts weaving a densely lysergic sonic pattern of colours and moods that sounds quite unlike anything else from the period. At the centre of this storm, of course, sits Miles Davis, the man effortlessly conducting patterns of musical energy like some strange jigsaw puzzle, moving the pieces around at his leisure whilst simultaneously pushing the incredibly flexible musicians at his disposal to places they have rarely been. A mixture of high talent and high ambition made at exactly the right time in history, this is undoubtedly one of the most iconic albums in both the jazz and the rock spheres. The striking cover art of German artist Mati Klarwein is almost a perfect testament to the music held within, and although Davis would regularly produce albums of stunning quality over the nest few years, none would quite match the achievements on offer here.
The very essence of 'progressive' music, 'Bitches Brew' is one of the defining statements of 20th century music from one of it's foremost creative minds, and an album which fully deserves its place in the gilded pantheon of sonic experimentation.
Recorded at New Yorks 30th Street studios and appearing in the spring of 1970, 'Bitches Brew' caused a storm of controversy upon it's initial release. Some saw it as a new path to a new music, an album brimming with innovation and style, whilst others saw it as nothing more than flash betrayal of jazz's long and glorious past, the rock influences overshadowing all else. Certainly the musicians who performed on it had little or no idea what they were actually doing at the time, with Davis pulling together his cast of players at extremely short notice and giving few, if any, instructions, therefore adding to the album's overall mystique. He would oversee and perform on almost all of the material on 'Bitches Brew', with the exception of British guitarist John McLaughlin's brief, eponymously-titled, four-and-a-half-minute piece, though his reputation for producing cool, melodic compositions was nowhere to be seen; this was powerful, explosive, freeform music filled with passion and adventure, the very antithesis of his previous albums.
The eventual legacy left by 'Bitches Brew' would be extraordinary, however, as Davis produced a series of scintillating electric jazz-rock odyssey's between the years 1969 and 1975, a period otherwise known as his highly-creative 'electric' phase which still to this day is the cause of so much debate and conjecture both inside and outside of the jazz and rock worlds. 'Bitches Brew' would be followed by the likes of 'On The Corner', 'Get Up With It' and 'Big Fun', whilst a host of incendiary live albums, many of which were recorded in New York(such as 'Dark Magus', 'Live At The Fillmore East' 'Live Evil' and 'Black Beauty') adapted the studio material into even longer, more progressive and more experimental structures that gave vent to Davis' everlasting urge to bush the boundaries of 'fusion' as far as he possibly could. In the wake of these recordings and performances, meanwhile, groups such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Nucleus and Weather Report sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic, displaying their own firey brands of jazzed-up rock music. For the third time in his career, Davis had forged yet another new movement.
A piece of incredible power, emotion and extreme instrumental prowess, 'Bitches Brew' is the big daddy of electric jazz albums. It is by no means a pleasant listen upon first inspection, yet, with subsequent visits, the music begins to take on it's own shape, with the twinkling keyboards, brief guitar rips, psyched-trumpet howls and improvisational brass bursts weaving a densely lysergic sonic pattern of colours and moods that sounds quite unlike anything else from the period. At the centre of this storm, of course, sits Miles Davis, the man effortlessly conducting patterns of musical energy like some strange jigsaw puzzle, moving the pieces around at his leisure whilst simultaneously pushing the incredibly flexible musicians at his disposal to places they have rarely been. A mixture of high talent and high ambition made at exactly the right time in history, this is undoubtedly one of the most iconic albums in both the jazz and the rock spheres. The striking cover art of German artist Mati Klarwein is almost a perfect testament to the music held within, and although Davis would regularly produce albums of stunning quality over the nest few years, none would quite match the achievements on offer here.
The very essence of 'progressive' music, 'Bitches Brew' is one of the defining statements of 20th century music from one of it's foremost creative minds, and an album which fully deserves its place in the gilded pantheon of sonic experimentation.
Key songs: Pharoah's Dance, Bitches Brew, Sanctuary
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