Miles Davis: Complete Bitches Brew Sessions

Thanks to the rapid distribution of information via the Internet and any number of media outlets, the relationship between artist and audience has never been closer. Yet there's a significant element missing from most modern music: surprise. There once was a time when a record's release could prompt an exhilarating rush of confusion and controversy, and Miles Davis was as adept as any musician at inspiring this kind of emotional response. After the breakup of his second legendary Quintet, Davis couldn't decide where to take his music next. He had just recorded In A Silent Way, an astounding record on which he deviated even further from the jazz that fans expected from him. But 1970's Bitches Brew, inspired partly by rock musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone and partly by then-tumultuous racial politics, was the album that broke Davis from any sense of tradition, ironically proving to be his biggest-selling release. Davis' new vision was subtler than ever before, his presence more of a catalyst for his creative players (including Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland, John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, and Jack DeJohnette, among others) than a controlling factor. The third box set in Columbia's recent Miles Davis reissue series, the four-CD The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, collects all the lengthy songs recorded between 1969 and 1970 (or at least the final versions of those songs), cleans up the sound, and places them in the usual stunning packaging. In more ways than one, these tracks sound better than ever before. The pristine new mix certainly has something to do with it, but in the 30 years since Bitches Brew was first recorded, perceptions of this stage in Davis' career have changed from quizzically oblique to obviously revolutionary. The sessions that ultimately formed Bitches Brew were subsequently remixed, cut up, and reassembled by ingenious producer Teo Macero, in many ways birthing today's generation of studio rats. And while, yes, the roots of fusion are here, so are elements of ambient music and minimalism. Davis' music would quickly grow more abrasive and less melodic, hitting its artistic nadir/summit (depending on whom you ask) with the maddening On The Corner, before becoming hit-or-miss. But Bitches Brew remains one sublime statement, an expressionist exercise in sonic alchemy that birthed a whole new world of cool.