Miles Davis: ‘Bitches Brew’ | Review

lovely review!! discovered a lot i didn't know about the album

I think listening to this album is similar to staring into a galaxy – there’s so much going on and almost impossible to find structure amongst the beauty. This album could quite easily become my favourite of all time if I were to find the time to listen to it once a week.

This was the album that got me full into Jazz. I was heavily into funk at the time and this record would sometimes get put in the funk section and I always picked it up because of the cool cover. One day I decided to buy it and thought it was great. It had enough funk to pull me in but it was also trippy and weird which i liked. Now im into all of Miles old stuff and loads of other great people. Thanks to this album and a bit of steely dan

Oh dear. Excellent, thorough review with more than a few pertinent (and importantly, impertinent) observations! I think we've discussed on a few occasions how I think BB is not only not all that but neither is it a bag of chips. A quick list of some issues I have:

10. Disc 1 is largely throwback music. While there are some interesting ideas, they appear the be mined from the 1967/68 Sorcerer/Nefertiti Period – which bypasses the bold and brilliant work he's done on Miles In The Sky, Side 2 of Files De Kilimanjaro and In A Silent Way

9. Pharohs Dance opens well, agreed, but then it becomes more editing sleight of hand, some of it quite unsubtle. Bitches Brew has better ideas but the editing just lets them down. One assumes they were harvested from breakdowns, but I cant help but think it would have worked better as 7-8 very short pieces than an overlong suite. It's a considerable retrenchment from the brilliant weaving and editing of In A Silent Way and, thankfully, they got it right again on the superior Jack Johnson

8. Disc 1 seriously lacks melody. It has breathy little phrases here and there, but it's also a turbid churn of competing players that persists across 3 sides of the disc and almost manage to overcome even the brilliance of disc 2

7. Miles has two of the greatest drummers of all time in his band and he still cant get anything funky out of them. Donald Fagan, said it best when he described the drumming as "silly" and that Miles hadn't hired the right guys for the gig, he needed steady (like Tony Williams was on IASW) or Al Foster was to be by the time he arrived for Live-Evil and not splashy. It's really only when De Johnette grabs control and plays straight ahead, driving stuff on Disc 2 that the problem starts to resolve.

6 Zawinul and Corea sound like they are trying to drown one another in a bucket. With the noted exception of Spanish Key, about 4:20 in, nothing they do ever resolves itself well

5. A good point – at about 4:20 in Spanish Key (right after the ba-ba-bup-baba key change), Miles blows one of the most outrageously cool passages ever – there's nothing in terms of melody, its pure tone and its gorgeous. Then John McLaughlin comes in with that nasty buzzing hornet guitar, but by 5:00, it's all pointless and instead of resolving, they judder on and do it all again, to significantly diminished returns

4. I liked your observation about the lack of apostrophe in Bitches – I'd never thought of that before. Surely Miles Runs The Voodoo Down is, at its heart (and at the beginning, very much on it's sleeve) a New Orleans first line march?

3. Sanctuary is taken from a Frank Sinatra song called "I fall In Love Too easily". Miles did in on his Seven Steps to Heaven album.

2. I think comparisons between this music, indeed between any of Miles music post 1964 and the Kind of Blue/Porgy and Bess/ Sketches of Spain era are kind of moot. The second great quintet (which had broken up by the time of BB n- only Wayne shorter plays on the record) rewrote the rules for Mile's music so totally that the first quintet, sextet and the Gil Evans records are in a flawless, incorruptible time capsule. BB seems determined to jettison the 1964-69 music to a similar place.

1. On the whole, I'd have it as a top 10 Miles album, but not a top 5. But nevertheless, it's good to see folks out inthe community talking about arch recalcitrant, back and forth.

Try as l might l never could and still can,t get into Miles '70's albums especially this one . Give me he,s '50's and '60's recordings anytime .

Thank you for this wonderful review!
Bitches Brew is definitely a Top 5 fusion/jazzrock album. I'm a Miles fan for decades but personally I prefer In a Silent Way and Jack Johnson to it. The box sets to these records are highly recommended, they show you how Miles gradually developed his "rock" sound and how the songs evolved.
If you noticed the cover background – the cloud and the lightening – they are based on the same photograph like DP's Stormbringer, an old photograph of a tornado dating from the twenties.

For me, it's only Miles' 23rd-best album.

A very fine record indeed. also a beautiful album cover. Robben Ford and Miles Davies really complemented each other, later on down the line.

I see Barry, I hit like. I see Miles, I hit like. I see Barry and Miles? I hit like continuously until I go to bed.

Brilliant! Well done and thanks. Have you done a review on Wayne Shorter 's "Speak No Evil"?? 👍