Miles Davis has always been one of my favorite all-time musicians, bar none. But when it comes to which period of Miles' music I like/really love the most, I'm at a loss to say which one really floats my boat. I mean, I don't discriminate here. But when all is said & done, it would have to be his electric period (1969-1975).
Miles Davis' electric period (the very same period which gave birth to fusion in general) was not only a time of radical experimentation. It was also a time for the man himself to make a clean break as it were from the conventions of jazz: incorporating African percussion, tablas, sitars, even shades of avant-garde composers into the equation, he was a man on a mission, stepping outside the box & connecting with the youth culture of those times. And he never ceased to amaze (& just as equally confound) the unsuspecting public & in particular the deeply conservative jazz critics of his day.
At the same time, it also must be said that his electric period was one of the most obscure & most misunderstood of his entire career. The music itself was an enigma, running along the same lines as its creator. You couldn't call it just jazz, rock, funk, calypso, or for goodness' sakes, even ambient (the German group Can already staked the first claim to the word "ambient" before Eno's Discreet Music saw the light of day). This was music, plain & simple. In all of its impenetrable depth, the supersonic equivalent of Picasso's paintings, the output which Miles put out during this timeframe was not only pretty powerful but intriguing as well.
Paul Tingen, in an article he wrote for the May 1998 edition of Sound on Sound magazine, remarks that "...the impenetrable density of some of the rhythm tracks, the often poor bass sound, and the awkwardness of some of the edits makes one wonder whether his (Miles') vision had ever been done justice to in the way it was committed to vinyl." The one amazing thing about Miles' recordings during his electric period was, & Bill Laswell's words in that same article are so right on, "...that they are interpretations of original performances." In other words, what we hear on those records doesn't necessarily mean that things were done exactly like so in the studio. They were the end result of a day's work, with plenty of heavy tape editing & manipulation; from 1969 up to 1975, the engineers let the tapes roll incessantly, hours & hours of tapes got filled up beyond belief.
At this point, longtime producer Teo Macero's contributions cannot be overlooked. He would be the one who saw to it what bits & pieces of recordings ended up on each album & how the record would sound in the final assessment. Via the aforementioned heavy tape editing & electronic tinkering around, Teo constructed Miles' albums in a style which could be viewed as a precursor to remixing. However, Teo worked intuitively in hopes of finding an effective product from all the available raw musical material he had at his disposal in the least possible time & sometimes mistakes would occur, especially in terms of edits & all. But you have to give the man credit for how he shaped Miles Davis' music during his electric phase...& did he ever come up with some awesome sounding albums!!
In summary, Miles Davis' electric period was not only one of his most controversial but also one of his most groundbreaking as well. Surprise was one of the elements he brought to his music in droves, but then again, change was an equally key component which defined Miles' mindset from the get-go: He never stayed set in his ways at any one time in his career & the material which came from his electric period reveals a musician who wasn't afraid of change, of taking new risks & adventures with his music, of pushing the musical envelope every chance he got.
Gotta love how this music has endured even after all these years...it's not for the faint-hearted, this.
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