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Beyond Miles: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis 1967-1991
by Paul Tingen
published by Billboard
So finally it has come to this: a critical study celebrating Miles Davis' almost perpetually controversial electric period. Let's face it: 'Miles Beyond' had to be written in whatever form. Greg Tate's 1983 essay 'Electric Miles' may have started the critical re-evaluation of the great trumpet player's most radical period; it took the 90s to come to terms with it musically and start implementing its ideas on a wider scale. Up till the 90s these, almost forgotten, maps of new worlds were studied by a select few. It was at the edges of Lester Bangs' writing that one could find mentions of titles like 'Rated X' or 'On the Corner', but if you went looking for the albums they were hard to get, since most of them weren't even considered for CD-reissue.
Even so, I finally got into Miles Davis (and ironically into jazz) when, in 1991, on a high from Loop-style minimal rock and the onslaught of rave, I bought the vinyl version of 'On the Corner'. What I heard was mind-blowing: an intricate forest of rhythm, bass, synths, a few jazz instruments, and a lot of studio-trickery. It remains, with 'Bitches Brew' (which followed soon), one of my favourite albums of all time. It never bores, you find something new every time you hear it. Steadily collecting these worlds of sound magic, I also started to learn a bit of the story behind the albums, the way the shift Miles made in 1969 with 'In a Silent Way', infecting jazz with funk and rock elements, was deemed not right by the jazz establishment. One has a hard time connecting the bitter words of fundamentalist critics like Stanley Crouch with the wonders this music presents. Often I get the image of Miles Davis suddenly growing wings, joyfully starting to fly, saying something like: "Hey look at me, I can fly, motherfuckers!", whilst little men like Crouch and his crony Wynton Marsalis shout in frustration at being stuck on earth: "No, you can't do that! It's against the law."
But let them have their staid museum jazz. In the meantime, a lot remained to be said about this metamorphosis: Bits and pieces were gathered, insight came more frequently by way of our greatest critics (Eshun, Reynolds, Toop), re-issues were finally released, receiving rapturous words of praise, and yet the music still was something of a mystery. This is the main reason Paul Tingen's book is invaluable. Through interviews with all the important collaborators of this period we get an intimate picture of how this strange music came into being. The book is very strong when Tingen describes the process of conceptualising by Miles and his idea man du jour, his choice of players, the way recording sessions unfold, and just letting the protagonists say how it went, what they felt.
Inevitably this turns to a discussion on who Miles Davis was, what moved him, what his goals were. Again his band members give the great quotes and build a surprising picture of an intelligent, sweet, somewhat shy man who really cared for his musicians, for music in general, and who willingly sacrificed his ego if it made the music stronger. But Miles is also a trickster. If one thing is made clear, it's that he quiet consciously did not want to get caught by expectations, not in life, not in music. "I have to change, it's like a curse," he once declared like a shape-shifter out of a myth. The witnesses give a rather complete portrait of the man (who could also be a demon), but Tingen adds his own interpretation of events. First of all through his personal fascination with Zen, secondly a more psychological approach. To a certain extent he makes good cases: Miles was a bit of a riddler with a sharp gift for emptying sound, the psychological interpretation of his retirement in the years 1975-1980 sounds like a believable mix of addictive personality traits and physical deterioration, but it also somehow feels a bit too neat.
I'm glad to get the stories of the sessions, the feeling of continuity, but I also hope to somehow forget them again. You see, 'Bitches Brew', for instance, at times doesn't sound as if it is played by humans, rather a spaceship that lands in the jungle and starts to transmit aural messages that transform the surroundings into heaven on earth. 'Miles Beyond' is a great read but not without its faults. Tingen seldom tries to transcend his subject as a writer. His language remains too earth-bound. A good thing for a description of a session or music techniques, but I also could use some poetry when describing sound, not only a dry description of what happens at what point on the album. A confrontation of this music with language has been successfully attempted by Kowdo Eshun (See his chapter on Fourth World jazz in 'More Brilliant than the Sun'.) and Simon Reynolds (especially his amazing two-page review of 'Electric Miles'-era live reissues in The Wire, October 1997).
Tingen also fails to name Bangs, Toop, Eshun, or Reynolds as writers who have written extensively on 'Electric Miles'. Of course, this makes your book seem groundbreaking, but in the end it would have benefited from some use of these sources. Especially since Tingen fails to expand on why Miles Davis has been an important influence on 90s electronica. He touches on the idea of the studio-as-instrument, but on the other hand is critical of the sound mix of 'Rated X', maybe the one track that has the most 90s feel. With its crossfading, hypnotic rhythm, "careless" mixing one can trace a direct line to Aphex Twin, Tricky, and A Guy Called Gerald. Tingen also treats his favourite albums ('In A Silent Way', the second side of 'Bitches Brew', 'Agartha') in far more detail than others: 'On the Corner' is recognised as an important experiment, but for some reason Tingen pulls back in calling it a success, he misses the point of the ferocious 'Dark Magus' (a total descent into the daemonic), and the skeletal funk of' Live at Philharmonic Hall' is hardly mentioned.
These are of course differences of taste, and they are easily brushed off, which isn't the case with Tingen's most irritating trait: his apparent inability to like any track that lasts longer than ten minutes. This is especially unbelievable in regards to 'Pharao's Dance' and 'Bitches Brew', which, clocking in at over 20 minutes, are just the right length. These tracks are almost carved in stone, they can't be questioned on the basis of such trivial things as length. After he repeats the same criticism over and over again it becomes a caricature, so much that one is shocked when Tingen starts to criticise those who think the quite majestic 'He Loved Him Madly' is too long at 32 minutes. It is as if Tingen, looking for some way to escape the possible accusation of being too uncritical, settled on track length as a quality to be negative about. The same way producer Teo Macero is singled out for repeated criticism. His editing is often called incomprehensible, it is questioned if he really could handle producing this kind of music, and he is told off for refusing (rightly in my opinion) to collaborate on remastering 'The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions'. All of Miles Davis' quite nasty and often degrading put-downs of Macero are repeated, and pompous arse Bill Laswell is quoted at length on his supposedly superior knowledge of handling the music of Miles on his remix project 'Panthalassa'. And still for me Macero comes off as the secret hero in this book, despite Miles' irritating assertion that "anybody could have done his job", it was Macero who reworked the sessions in the studio, who instilled the futurity in this music by adding effects, fucking with cause and effect, time and space (Tingen again quite unbelievably doesn't comprehend the brilliant play with space Macero produced on 'Live-Evil''s 'Inamorata', where the track at the end shifts into deep space.). No need to worry too much about Macero though, since Brian Eno has quite frequently given him credit for revolutionising music production, and most of the time he is named in the same breath as King Tubby, Brian Wilson, and Phil Spector as one of the great producers of all time.
As it stands, 'Miles Beyond' is probably the best book we could hope for at the moment. It's highly informative (The 'Sessionography' by Enrico Merlin is essential). and passionate, but one wonders if the ultimate book on Miles' most fruitful period remains to be written. That book should focus solely on the 1967-1975 period (sacrificing a happy end and about 100 pages on his music of the 80s) and investigate the mythscience, the poetry, and the true heirs of this sublime music. That would be a true 'Bitches Brew' of a book.
http://www.kindamuzik.net/achtergrond/miles-davis/miles-beyond/512/
Meer Miles Davis op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/miles-davis
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