Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1970)

October 22, 2020

So this is it, the grand daddy of jazz fusion. Now over 50 years old, it was the perfect time to return to this record and give it another run through. I first heard this in I think 2008, a friend gave me some high-end mp3 rips of it, and on the recommendation of my uncle to check it out, I tried my damnedest to get into it and understand what was going on, but I just couldn’t get my head around it.

12 years later of course, things are a bit different. I can sit through it without getting bored (lol) and of course I can appreciate all of the little things that are going on. Bitches Brew is a monster of a record. The tracks are enormous and the scope is mind boggling. I could bang on for ages about how Miles revolutionised jazz music by not only spearheading the fusion movement with this record but by introducing electronic instrument elements to jazz, as well as bang on about Teo Macero’s post production trickery, but I won’t.

I will say however that I prefer the latter “half” of the record, in particular the track “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down” being my favourite here. His playing on this track is sublime. I found the first two tracks incredibly intimidating in my youth and I guess that has stuck with me. Whilst I heavily appreciate the tape looping techniques used on “Pharaoh’s Dance” and the title track, I find that the following four tracks flow much better and naturally. The tape loops / dubbing would work much better on later records, in my opinion, and let’s be honest here, the title track to this thing is a bad acid trip.

Bitches Brew is one of those albums that is more a historical document than just another record, and I’m proud to finally write about it and commit it to the site.