Miles Davis - The Electric Years (Box Set) (2023) LP

In a year that has brought us a true bounty of previously unheard majesty including Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy (Impulse!), and Bill Evans; Treasures: Solo, Trio & Orchestra Recordings from Denmark (1965-1969), (Elemental Music) it is only fitting that Miles Davis get his due. And in a very, very big way.
Seared into modern memory, modern art, the music presented on the gloriously massive, eleven LP set Miles Davis: The Electric Years needs no latter day reassessment of what is, perhaps, Davis' most critical, most influential stretch of musical invention. Just a trio of the seven Columbia Records titles included here, In A Silent Way, 1969, Bitches Brew, 1970, and Live-Evil, 1971 bares out that thesis. But this new presentation, gifted to the world by Vinyl Me, Please, most certainly does.
Founded in 2013 as a tightly curated, record-of-the-month club alternative to the cold calculus of bits, bytes, and binary codes of downloads and streaming, VMP has quickly evolved into an industry-leading business model featuring four Record of the Month Tracks, immersive box sets, an extensive online store, magazine, podcasts, and a membership of over eighty-thousand ranging across forty countries.
It is a very cool rise to prominence and Miles Davis: The Electric Years proves why emphatically. The music, be it played on a refurbished, Uncle Sal's Technic turntable like that of yours truly or one of those Mark Levinson luxury tables with a Shibata stylus fitted into a sapphire cantilever (?), rolls out ominously. An oddly restive cloud with sheer clarity: sitar, tablas, Michael Henderson's throb happy bass, John McLaughlin's cutting swaths all palpable. You actually, in some primordial way, feel the music as well as hear it. It is what VMP does without contest. It immerses and envelopes you.
And as the Columbia label spins round and round, that vinyl hypnosis sets in and Big Fun (1974), becomes part of your being again. Not just the guileless result of a long distance shout out to Siri or Alexa or whatever the AI goddess of choice is to "play some electric Miles!" No, the wonder curators at VMP make it part of the bloodstream like all analogue—be it shellac, discarded medical x-ray film, or choice 180gram vinyl—was intended to.
Whatever it was that Miles and his funky deconstructionists where laying done (besides an ultimatum to the world at large) between 1969 and 1974 may never be fully explained, explored, debated, or agreed upon. But to experience it like this—mastered AAA from original source masters; pressed in the Czech Republic by GZ Media (the world's largest vinyl manufacturer); with startling graphics and a twenty-four page history lesson by Ben Ratliff—Miles Davis: The Electric Years is an epic labor. It might be, for some, a budget buster ($399.99) and for the mailman a hump (the set weighs in at ten pounds). But if you long to hear this mysterious noise for the first time again or for the first time ever, there are more devious and dangerous passions to waste retirement savings or the college fund on. At least, in the end, Vinyl Me, Please brings joy, daresay wonder, back into life.
And the music well, it spooks you still. And if you haven't heard Get Up With It (1974) via vinyl of late, get set for a kick in the pants. It sounds like breathing with Miles and his organ defining the dark scenarios of indefinite time, place and fog of war be it 1970-1974 or 2023 forward.
In A Silent Way (1969) is In A Silent Way and it always will be. VMP is just making sure we hear it like it was meant to be: Unfurled horizons as far as can be heard. Tony Williams' insistent roll. Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Joe Zawinul catalyzing that head space where Miles, Wayne Shorter and McLaughlin go long. And prosper.
Bitches Brew broadened the tapestry. Hearing it anew you revel as Davis and his then present company—including those budding geniuses previously mentioned as well as Jack DeJohnette, Lenny White, Harvey Brooks Don Alias, Dave Holland et all—generate jazz rock and neither music remains the same.
At the height of the inglorious and still telling Jim Crow era, Jack Johnson became America's first Black American heavyweight boxer and A Tribute To Jack Johnson (1971) pulls no punches. Especially here where each trumpet blare and guitar slash ricochet off a funk rock bedrock making it easy to fantasize any series of what ifs: What if it was Miles and the Grateful Dead? Miles with Earth, Wind, and Fire? Sly?
Live-Evil (1971), collaged by the uniquely brilliant Teo Macero from period recording sessions and a spellbinding stint at The Cellar Door in D.C. in 1970, jumps out of the vintage JBL L100's and refocuses the attention on what matters: Players leaving their mark on history, simply by believing in what they played.
As Ratliff posits rightly in his accompanying essay, Miles Davis: The Electric Years holds an organic unity as the music chronicled grows from and dissolves into itself. Thus On The Corner, spurned by most upon its release in 1972 and 1974's vibrantly hypnotic Big Fun are and aren't one piece. It is as neat a trick of invention as Davis ever pulled.