Bitches Brew

Amazon.com
Bitches Brew was a shot across the bow of jazz insularity, and, much like the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper before it, it drew upon elements both inside and outside the mainstream to fashion an avant-garde, yet extremely influential, take on popular music's relation to modernism, and vice versa. As such, Miles Davis became a lightning rod for jazz's transformation (or corruption as some diehards insist), and by mixing the fundamental elements of collective improvisation with fulminating dance rhythms, psychedelic electric textures, polytonal harmonies and a freely inflected brand of blues phrasing (as reflected in his own Kind of Blue-brand of modalism and the parallel directions of Hendrix, Cream, Sly Stone, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye), Davis signaled a sea-change in jazz. However, producer Teo Macero's spooky, compressed mix tends to suck all the air out of the room, emphasizing the often static nature of Harvey Brooks's bedrock Fender bass heartbeats, while obscuring the complex polytonal/polyrhythmic web of volatile harmonies, colliding cross-rhythms and contrasting melodic lines. Bitches Brew is a modern jazz masterpiece screaming for a critical reassessment (and a re-mix), but nothing can obscure the crafty tension and release of Davis's turn over a "Sex Machine"-styled ostinato on "Spanish Key," nor the spatial collective "&mysterioso" and epic breadth of the title tune. --Chip Stern

Bitches Brew,Miles Davis,Sony,Jazz,Pop

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