Soon Over Babaluma being the sequel to Future Days is in some ways similar to how Bitches Brew is to In A Silent Way, as the sounds, techniques and tempos are both turned up a notch in the follow up.
― earlnash, Friday, 4 November 2005 17:54 (eighteen years ago) link
There's the rub!
― Oh No, It's Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 4 November 2005 18:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dyngus Tatis (aarana), Friday, 4 November 2005 18:58 (eighteen years ago) link
That would largely be b/c Miles took out all the chord changes, leaving only the melody...
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Friday, 4 November 2005 19:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tyler Wilcox (tylerw), Friday, 4 November 2005 19:23 (eighteen years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Friday, 4 November 2005 19:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Oh No, It's Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 4 November 2005 19:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 4 November 2005 19:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― fffnnnsss, Saturday, 5 November 2005 02:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― paulhw (paulhw), Saturday, 5 November 2005 04:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― steve ketchup, Saturday, 5 November 2005 16:26 (eighteen years ago) link
It is a nice record. They use a Fender Rhodes and an acoustic bass in the band setup with some bass clarinet on some tracks, so the textures are very reminicient of late 60s turn of the 70s jazz.
― Earl Nash (earlnash), Saturday, 5 November 2005 22:44 (eighteen years ago) link
(I also found the thread where Josh described Rush as a spiritual experience and was being hyperbolic not sarcastic. Ah, heady days.)
― Sundar (sundar), Sunday, 6 November 2005 03:34 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't like the self-titled Zawinul album -- better to get Weather Report's first self-titled, I think. (Don't get the second S/T!) Sextant is great, though.
The early '70s jazz-fusion band Nucleus has a disc, Elastic Rock, that might hit the spot too.
I was a little disappointed by the Isle of Wight performance.
― can't log in, don't know why, Sunday, 6 November 2005 05:03 (eighteen years ago) link
― poortheatre (poortheatre), Sunday, 6 November 2005 07:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― Brett G. (Brett G.), Sunday, 6 November 2005 12:15 (eighteen years ago) link
listen a few more times to Kind of Blue
and check out A Love Supreme
― Brett G. (Brett G.), Sunday, 6 November 2005 12:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― I do feel guilty for getting any perverse amusement out of it (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 6 November 2005 15:09 (eighteen years ago) link
Heh, you can't be a big fan of McLaughlin's own records!
― Sundar (sundar), Sunday, 6 November 2005 15:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― Stephane R., Monday, 7 November 2005 09:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Monday, 7 November 2005 10:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tyler Wilcox (tylerw), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 17:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― js (honestengine), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 04:45 (eighteen years ago) link
Maybe this was already answered in this thread, but what's the general opinion of the three disc "sessions" sets for these albums? I know Macero did a lot of cutting and pasting for the finished albums. How do the sessions hold up?
― moriarty (moriarty), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 05:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― poortheatre (poortheatre), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 08:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― Chuck B, Wednesday, 9 November 2005 14:43 (eighteen years ago) link
Not that this should change your opinion of it (it either hits you or it doesn't), but Kind of Blue was actually very unique and tradition-breaking when it came out. It just also happens to be very easy to listen to and accessible, so much so that it's kind of become the definitive jazz album for many people. KOB was very much breaking with the bop tradition at the time, but most Charlie Parker probably sounds more radical to most people than KOB.
In a way maybe you could use the analogy of someone like Aaron Copland, who wrote very modern, innovative music that was also very pleasant to the ears, so that today a lot of his stuff is quintessential Americana, whereas Bartok and Stravinsky still sound avant garde.
― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 15:00 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't understand this reaction at all. I bought it when I was fifteen, and loved it for years, listening to it all the time. Now I don't listen to it much at all, but that's because I've got it all but memorized in my head, not because of some kind of inability to appreciate it on its own merits because it's been over-praised or some such I-read-too-many-magazines-and-believe-what-I-read-therein horseshit.
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 15:25 (eighteen years ago) link
I would recommend the Silent Sessions, as it contains very little 'filler' - like 35 versions of a tossed-off vamp as in the Johnson Sessions - and it's the cheapest of the boxes.
It also does a really good job of showing how the album was edited, by including the full performances that were chopped up (something which as was mentioned above the Bitches Sessions box doesn't do).
― Brakhage (brakhage), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 15:27 (eighteen years ago) link
Brakhage--thanks for the tip on the boxes.
― moriarty (moriarty), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 23:32 (eighteen years ago) link
I was actually going to post asking if anyone had some recommendations for something similar to that one, as i've still never heard anything else like it. "tauhid" by pharaoh sanders maybe comes close. doesn't need to be jazz, i just have a craving for that kind of dark, extended motif.
― naturemorte, Thursday, 17 November 2005 02:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― naturemorte, Thursday, 17 November 2005 02:31 (eighteen years ago) link
There's a track on Squarepusher's Budakhan Mindphone which, if it's not a straight sample, is an homage to "Circle". It's only a few minutes long, though.
― Vic Funk, Thursday, 17 November 2005 11:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Sunday, 18 June 2006 09:19 (seventeen years ago) link
― simon 803 (simon 803), Sunday, 18 June 2006 12:58 (seventeen years ago) link
― Max Blazevic (kitaj), Sunday, 18 June 2006 13:55 (seventeen years ago) link
-- pdf (newyorkisno...), November 9th, 2005.
Let me help you understand my reaction. I got into jazz around 1969 and the among the first jazz albums I had were IASW & BB and most of the Miles descendents mentioned upthread. But soon I got into the Chicago avant-garde: Roscoe Mitchell's Congliptious followed by the AEC material on BYG/Actuel (Reese & the Smooth Ones, A Jackson in Your House, A Message to Our Folks) and then the ESP avant material (Giuseppe Logan, New York Contemporary Five, Ayler, Heliocentric Worlds and so on). Whenever I heard KOB it was an anachronism, a bit of the past that seemed irrelavant in the light of Muhal's Things to Come from Those Now Gone, Levels and Degrees of Light and even things that had been recorded contemporaneously such as Ra's Angels & Demons at Play. For most of the twenty years from 1969 to 1989, I found it hard to listen to KOB even next to Miles's contemporaries--I loved Mingus no end, that shit swung, KOB was too down tempo for me.
I started going back though listening to the Coltrane Atlantic recordings and to Miles's classic quartets of the 60s. Sometime in the mid 80s KOB became available as a Columbia Legacy imprint and I put it on the player and played it over and over again. I think I had matured as a listener and began to appreciate the music that Miles and Evans composed as an alternative to bop.
Never was it a matter of my "inability to appreciate it on its own merits because it's been over-praised or some such I-read-too-many-magazines-and-believe-what-I-read-therein horseshit."
I have no idea where you got the idea that my not getting KOB was in any way innfluenced by such factors. It was simply a matter of slowing down and appreciating the music for what was there and not for what wasn't.
― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Sunday, 18 June 2006 16:29 (seventeen years ago) link
Working nearly contemporarily and forward (in jazz and jazz fusion--I'll leave the rock-fusion suggestions to those who hear those connections better than I):
John McLaughlin: Birds of Fire, and yes, DevotionHancock: the Mwandishi recordings up-thread and don't overlook Head HuntersJan Garbarek/Bobo Stenson Q-tet: Witchi-Tai-ToSoft Machine: 5John Surman/Morning Glory: s.t.Tony Williams Lifetime: EmergencyKhalid Yasin/larry Young: Lawrence of Newark
― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Sunday, 18 June 2006 17:02 (seventeen years ago) link
-- Tyler Wilcox (tywil...), November 8th, 2005.
Oh, ick! And let me assure you I am a Laswell fan. I hate what LAswell did on PPanthalassa. As in, let's imagine IASW without Tony Williams. Gack. I probably have forty or so disks by each of Miles and of Laswell and they ain't all gems, for sure, but Panthalassa is one I sold without regrets.
And he did do s sequel, sort of. It is called "Divine Light: Reconstructions and Mix Translations" in which Laswell remixes & recasts the Carlos Santana/Jonhn McLaughlin "Love Devotion & Surrender" and the Santana/Alice Coltrane "Illuminations." I have kept this one, but still prefer the original LDS. He may have improved "Illuminations" somewhat or at least offered a remix that is a little less pretentious than the original. (or am I thinking of Welcome?
― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Sunday, 18 June 2006 17:15 (seventeen years ago) link
― JMMMusic (Jimmy M), Sunday, 18 June 2006 17:26 (seventeen years ago) link
As I was saying, I purchased Witchi-Tai-To about 6 months ago and it's barely left my record player. A wholly amazing album.
― JMMMusic (Jimmy M), Sunday, 18 June 2006 17:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― naturemorte (naturemorte), Thursday, 22 June 2006 19:47 (seventeen years ago) link
I hadn't listened to this in years, then put side A on the other night. I thought I had maybe fucked up my turntable because the guitars sounded kinda out of tune no matter what I did. Then I listened to a couple of iTunes clips and remembered "oh, that's just how it sounds!"
― Jordan, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:01 (sixteen years ago) link
I have the Panthalassa mix of this and it really is beautiful music.
― Trayce, Friday, 21 December 2007 05:05 (sixteen years ago) link
It's interesting that in both the Tim Buckley and Brian Eno biographies, both subjects got so obsessed with In A Silent Way that they listened to little else for a long period (nearly a year).
― Fastnbulbous, Wednesday, 6 August 2008 13:28 (fifteen years ago) link
Anyone got Big Fun? Been listening to it loads lately and it's some of the best shit I've ever heard. Obv love on the corner, get up with it, and iasw. Where to next? Is dark magus good? Herbie hancock? All of you need Big Fun by the way, I listened to it on a long bus journey through Spain this week, just such end times experimentalism, about as rich as music gets.
― Ronan, Monday, 28 September 2009 16:23 (fourteen years ago) link
lotsa good suggestions of similar stuff in this thread and this one: In A Similarly Silent Way
― tylerw, Monday, 28 September 2009 16:25 (fourteen years ago) link
you've heard pangaea, right?
― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Monday, 28 September 2009 16:28 (fourteen years ago) link
In A Silent Way is among the best albums ever.
― Daniel, Esq., Monday, 28 September 2009 16:28 (fourteen years ago) link
I love Big Fun. Ife!
Dark Magus is great, Pangaea is great, Agharta is mostly great.
Herbie's solo stuff immediately following his stint with Miles is amazing too, but in a different way, not as out there. more pop hooks tho
― man, motherfuck a paddington bear (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 28 September 2009 16:31 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, I don’t think those ever came out. It’s definitely somewhat dickish to mention those without any explanation as to why they’re not included. Miles supposedly didn’t want any of his unreleased material to come out anyway, according to Teo Macero, so it can’t be put down to “Miles wasn’t happy with these.” I know that the reissue/boxed set program played fast-and-loose with the terminology: the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions set is nothing of the sort. Unlike the IASW set, it doesn’t include the unedited takes of what would be assembled later. So Belden probably just excluded those “interludes” because they spoiled the flow of the box, and/or stuck out as jarringly different to the rest of the set.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, 13 March 2023 20:44 (one year ago) link