Outer Music Diary

This didn’t happen yesterday, but I didn’t know it until now. My thoughts on the band can be found here:

I’ve been listening to “Red Shift” for the last couple of weeks and it sounds waaaaay better to my ears now than it did 10 years ago.

Miles Davis - The Complete On the Corner Sessions (discs 5 -6)

Moving through this box set, it seems less like the On the Corner sessions and more just the remaining studio recordings of the 70s. While the early discs and certainly the last disc with the full On the Corner album are full of deep grooves, discs 3-5 have a much spacier feel, the motifs much more laid back. It’s hard not to get the feeling that it was albums like Get Up With It and Big Fun that already cleared up the master reels, because almost every impressive track on this box set after the June 1972 recordings is from one of these albums. Those that aren’t (for example “Hip Skip” on disc 5) seem unnecessary and are unlikely to impress even the wildest Miles-o-philes. I restarted disc 5 at least twice and found myself losing interest in it. While the laid back, rhythm guitar led feel of “Maiysha” is rather nice and it’s interesting to hear another take on “Mtume,” this disc struck me as the weakest in the set.

For many, the question is going to be whether it’s worth it. While I consider the album On the Corner a masterpiece and after Bitches Brew possibly the best album of Miles’ electric phase, it heightened the controversy already raised by his move to electricity. The album apparently plays to an audience digging James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, which will tend to invite those comparisons, but it wasn’t as if Miles was up for some slavish copy. No matter how hard the album grooves, and it’s in the pocket as far as that’s concerned, there’s still a jazz aesthetic at work in the way the players interact around a main theme. While listening to this happening over 15 minutes as so many of the unedited versions are, it’s easy to see that a static bass line and a concentration on rhythm might narrow the focus some, but that’s really where the studio aspect begins, where we can celebrate Miles (and Teo Macero) ability to turn raw material into gold.

All the material here has been remastered, even since the fairly recent releases of On the Corner, Big Fun and Get Up With It. But having found the sound quality satisfactory on those, it’s hard to imagine that there’s much of an upgrade on this box. Maybe the always fantastic liner notes will be enough to push one over the edge. Needless to say, this is one for the collectors only - most won’t need to see behind the curtain.