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Agharta (album)

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Agharta
File:MilesDavis Agartha designbyTadanoriYokoo.jpg
Live album by Miles Davis
Released August 1975
Recorded February 1, 1975
Venue Festival Hall in Osaka
Genre Jazz-rock, funk rock, avant-garde
Length 97:34
Label CBS/Sony
Producer Teo Macero
Miles Davis chronology
Get Up with It
(1974)Get Up with It1974		 Agharta
(1975)		 Pangaea
(1976)Pangaea1976
Alternate cover
1976 North American release
1976 North American release

Agharta is a 1975 live double album by American jazz musician Miles Davis. By the time he recorded the album, Davis had alienated many in the jazz community while attracting younger rock audiences with his radical electric fusion music. After experimenting with different line-ups, he established a stable live band in 1973 and toured constantly for the next two years despite physical pain from worsening health issues and emotional instability brought on by substance abuse. During a three-week tour of Japan in 1975, Davis performed two concerts at the Festival Hall in Osaka on February 1; the afternoon show produced Agharta and the evening show was released as Pangaea the following year.

Davis led a septet at the concert; saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, and guitarist Pete Cosey were given space to improvise against a dense backdrop of riffs, electronic effects, cross-beats, and funk grooves from the rhythm section—drummer Al Foster, guitarist Reggie Lucas, and percussionist James Mtume. Davis controlled their rhythmic and musical direction with hand and head gestures, phrases played on his wah-wah processed trumpet, and drones from an accompanying electric organ. The evolving nature of the performance led to the widespread misunderstanding that Agharta's music had no compositional basis.

Agharta was first released in Japan by CBS/Sony in August 1975 after Davis retired. At the record label's suggestion, it was titled after the legendary subterranean city. Davis enlisted Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo to design the album's artwork, which depicted the cityscape of an advanced civilization with elements inspired by Eastern subterranean myths and Afrofuturism. An alternate cover was produced for the album's 1976 release in North America by Columbia Records.

A strongly divisive record, Agharta further challenged Davis' jazz audience and was widely panned by contemporary critics; reviewers found the music discordant while complaining of Cosey's loud sound effects and Davis' limited trumpet playing. It was reassessed positively in the years following his retirement, while a generation of younger musicians was influenced by the band's abrasive music and cathartic playing, particularly Cosey's distortion-inflected free improvisations. Agharta became viewed as an important jazz-rock record, a dramatically dynamic group performance, and the culmination of Davis' electric period spanning the late 1960s and mid 1970s.

Background

Miles Davis in 1971

In the early 1970s, Miles Davis continued exploring directions radically different from the jazz music that made him renowned in the 1950s and 1960s.[1] The music from this electric period in his career found him experimenting with rock, funk, African rhythms, emerging electronic music technology, and an ever-changing lineup of musicians who played electric instruments.[2] Davis attracted younger audiences as his fusion music became more radical and abstract while alienating older listeners, musicians, and critics in the jazz scene who accused him of selling out.[3] After his 1972 album On the Corner, he began to focus more on performing live, working in the studio only sporadically and haphazardly; the 1974 releases Big Fun and Get Up with It compiled recordings he made between 1969 and 1974.[4] By 1973, Davis had established most of his band's line-up, a septet featuring bassist Michael Henderson, guitarists Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, and saxophonist Dave Liebman; Liebman left the group in 1974 and was replaced by Sonny Fortune.[5] Lucas, Foster, and Mtume functioned as the band's rhythm section, while Cosey, Henderson, and Fortune were given space to improvise as soloists.[6] Their concerts—played frequently at rock venues and festivals—became opportunities for Davis to test new musical ideas and ways to exploit electronic equipment.[7]

Davis toured relentlessly for two years while tolerating intense physical pain and difficulty walking from health complications, including joint pain caused by sickle-cell anaemia, decimated ankles after a 1972 car wreck, and osteoporosis in his left hip, which had been operated on a decade earlier.[8] He had also developed nodules on his larynx that often left him short of breath, especially when playing the trumpet.[9] To numb the pain, he became increasingly dependent on painkillers, cocaine, and morphine, which combined with his alcohol and drug use led to mood swings; he would by turns feel vulnerable and hostile.[10] By the end of 1974, a disappointing showing in Down Beat magazine's readers poll reinforced to Davis that his reputation had diminished.[11] Unfazed by detractors and personal troubles, he kept his touring schedule intense. "He was like the general looking at the fort and they had a moat and we were going to get in that fort", Henderson later said. "That was the attitude of the band. We didn't give a shit what the critics said. People are gonna like what they like, but if you don't like it, respect it. Respect that I have the right to do what I do. Because with or without you, we're going to do it anyway."[12]

Festival Hall in Osaka, where Agharta was recorded

In 1975, Davis embarked on a three-week tour of Japan; between January 22 and February 8, he played 14 concerts in large-hall venues to capacity crowds and enthusiastic reviews. Japanese critic Keizo Takada said Davis led his "magnificent and energetic" band just as Duke Ellington had with his orchestra: "Miles must be the genius of managing men and bringing out their hidden talent."[11] Throughout the tour, Davis had been sick with pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer that grew worse, while his hip occasionally and unpredictably slipped out of its socket. He was unable to work his trumpet's volume and effects pedals because of the pain in his legs, so he would go down on his knees to press them with his hand during shows. To relieve his pain and continue performing, Davis used codeine and morphine, smoked, and drank large quantities of Heineken beer. On several occasions, he was able to perform two concerts in one day, as he did on February 1 at the Festival Hall in Osaka.[13] "The Japanese people were very beautiful", Henderson recalled from the concert. "They came in with their suit and ties on and we proceeded to blow the roof off the suckers with a million amplifiers."[14] The concerts were recorded by Japan's CBS/Sony record label under the supervision of Davis' long-time producer Teo Macero.[13] They were released as two double albums—Agharta, featuring the afternoon show, was first released in Japan in August 1975 and in North America in 1976; the evening show was issued as Pangaea later that same year in Japan.[15]

Composition

Sonny Fortune (pictured in 2007), whose solos on Agharta were described by Mikal Gilmore as "floats over formidable rhythmic density, taking long and graceful breaks that wing off into a private reverie"[16]

For the first of the afternoon concert's two sets, Davis' septet performed the compositions "Tatu", "Agharta Prelude", and "Maiysha" (from Get Up with It), making up Agharta's first disc of music. "Right Off" (from Davis' 1970 album Jack Johnson), "Ife" (from Big Fun), and "Wili (= For Dave)" spanned the second disc, which grouped the music into two tracks titled "Interlude" and "Theme from Jack Johnson".[17] According to Brian Priestley, the first track on the second disc should have been named "Theme from Jack Johnson", but the titles were reversed on the disc label's track listing and liner notes for all editions of Agharta.[18] Between the "Right Off" and "Ife" segments, the band improvised a passage based on "So What" (from Davis' 1959 album Kind of Blue) for 41 seconds after Henderson started to play its ostinato.[19]

The pieces played on Agharta were part of a typical set list for the band, but their performances of each sometimes changed almost beyond recognition from concert to concert. This led to the widespread misunderstanding that the music was mostly or entirely improvised and unstructured.[20] Lucas explained that the band started each performance with a "very defined compositional basis" before developing it further in a highly structured yet "very free way". This kind of "structured improvisation", he said, resulted in significant interplay between the rhythm section and allowed the band to improvise "a lot more than just the notes that were being played in the solos; we were improvising the entire song as we went along."[20] Music scholars were able to identify the individual pieces through an examination of what Davis researcher Enrico Merlin called "coded phrases". These phrases were usually played by Davis on trumpet or organ to signify the end of one segment and direct the band toward the next section. He first used such cues and modulations, Merlin said, when recording "Flamenco Sketches" in 1959.[21]

On Agharta, Davis' group abandoned melodic and harmonic conventions in favor of riffs, cross-rhythms, and funk grooves as a backdrop for soloists to improvise throughout.[22] Simon Reynolds, who categorized it as a jazz-rock record, wrote in The Wire that the music "offered a drastic intensification of rock's three most radical aspects: space, timbre, and groove".[23] It also showcased Davis' avant-garde impulses; according to Greg Tate, the band created "a pan-ethnic web of avant-garde music", while Phil Alexander from Mojo said it was "both ambient yet thrashing, melodic yet coruscating", and suggestive of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic experiments.[24] Like Pangaea and Dark Magus (1977)—two other albums showcasing Davis' septet—Agharta revealed what Amiri Baraka described as Davis' affinity for minimalism.[25] He had preferred understated compositions throughout his career but the group's performance revealed a deeper embrace of rhythm inspired by Afrocentric politics, according to Martha Bayles. The music they performed, she explained, drew from jazz only in their use of free improvisation and from rock only in the use of electronics and "ear-bleeding volume".[26] Davis said his live music at this point had "settled down into a deep African thing, a deep African-American groove" emphasizing rhythm and drums, although he did not completely reject melody: "We ain't in Africa, and we don't play just chants. There's some theory under what we do."[27]

During the concert, Davis directed approximately 50 stops or breaks to the band, particularly the rhythm section, by gesturing with his head or hand.[28] These stops served as dramatic turning points in the tension-release structure of the performances, changing their tempo and allowing the band to alternate between quiet passages and intense climaxes.[29] Davis also interjected the performances with drone washes from his Yamaha organ, achieving a "strange, nearly perverse presence" that Mikal Gilmore believed "defined the temper" of the music.[30] Lucas said Davis applied a feel for dynamics he had developed earlier in his career playing jazz but with a greater array of contrasts, including atonal, dissonant chords, and his own bebop trumpet playing set against the band's James Brown-inspired funk rhythms. "Extreme textures and extreme volume", Lucas explained, "were as much part of the pallete as the contrasting chord and rhythmic structures. Being equipped like a full rock band, we sometimes literally blew the walls out."[29] During the "Tatu" and "Agharta Prelude" segments, Davis abruptly stopped and started the band several times to shift tempos by playing a dissonant, cacophonous organ figure, giving Cosey space to generate eccentric, psychedelic figures and effects.[31] The main theme for "Tatu" had been played at a slower tempo when Cosey first joined Davis' band, but they played it faster as they grew rapport with each other and Davis live, especially by the time of their Japanese tour. Davis, Cosey said, had the ability to "transmit thoughts and ideas like that to his frontline guy".[32]

Pete Cosey used an EMS Synthi A (pictured above) as an effects unit for his improvisations on Agharta.[32]

The rhythmic direction of the music was also occasionally interrupted by densely layered percussive and electronic effects, including repeated whirring and grinding sounds. Cosey generated these sounds by running his guitar through a ring modulator and EMS Synthi A.[33] The latter device was an early synthesizer with knobs and buttons but no keyboard, making it useful for producing abstract noises rather than exact pitches and melodies. Cosey said he used it to suggest a certain soundscape during each performance, "whether we were in space, or underwater or a group of Africans playing – just different soundscapes".[34] Onstage, he also had a table set up holding a mbira, claves, agogo bells, and several other hand percussion instruments, which he played or struck with a mallet to indicate a different break or stop. "I would hit them just like they do at [boxing] fights!", Cosey recalled.[35] His synthesizer occasionally interacted with the experimental sounds Mtume was able to generate from his drum machine, such as during the "Ife" segment. Davis gave the instrument to Mtume after receiving it from Yamaha, the Japanese tour's sponsor, and told him "see what you can do with it." Rather than use it to create rhythms, Mtume ran the drum machine through several different pedals and phase shifters such as the Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, creating a sound he said was "total tapestry".[36]

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Our concerts began like a balloon that was incredibly compressed. After that it was a matter of gradually letting the air out. The energy it took us to play at that level was enormous. There were times that we had to lie down after we had finished playing. Before the concert we'd build this energy up. We looked at each other, and said, 'Let's go through the wall.' That was our slogan. It meant taking it as far as we could physically. To stay at that level of concentration and energy for two to three hours was going through the wall.

— James Mtume[37]

Unlike Davis' previous recordings, the cadenzas throughout Agharta were mostly played by Fortune and Cosey.[13] Fortune alternated between soprano and alto saxophones and the flute, performing with a "substance and structure" Gilmore believed was very much indebted to John Coltrane during his A Love Supreme (1965) period.[16] Fortune performed his longest alto saxophone solo on "Right Off", which opened the record's second disc.[38] In Gilmore's opinion, this "propulsive" segment "flies by like a train ride in a dream, where scenes flash past the window in a fascinating and illusive dream".[16] Cosey heavily employed dissonance and feedback in his guitar improvisations on Agharta.[13] For his guitar, he arranged the strings in different places and used at least 36 different tuning systems, including the E-flat tuning.[36] According to Charles Shaar Murray, his playing recalled the echoic, free jazz-inspired solos of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix while Lucas performed in the manner of the guitarist's more lyrical rhythm and blues songs; Cosey's playing was separated to the left channel and Lucas to the right on the record.[39] Jazz writer Stuart Nicholson wrote that Davis utilized his guitarists on the album in a way which realized the "waves of harmonic distortion" Hendrix had explored in his music.[40]

In Murray's view, Agharta invoked Hendrix's influence on Davis' music more explicitly than any other of his records; Nicholson considered it to be the "closest approximation" to the music they could have recorded together.[41] Davis veered from succinct and expressive solos to unsentimental wails on his trumpet, which suggested he was still mourning Hendrix's 1970 death, Murray surmised.[42] That year, Davis had started playing with a wah-wah pedal affixed to his trumpet in order to emulate the register Hendrix achieved on his guitar.[43] By the time of the concert, Davis had developed what Philip Freeman described as "a new tone, the wiggly, shimmering ribbons of sound that are heard on Agharta", where his wah-wah processed solos often sounded frantic and melancholic, like "twisted streams of raw pain".[44] After Lucas' first and only solo of the show climaxed the "Ife" segment, Davis introduced "Wili (= For Dave)" with a few organ chords, culminating in Cosey's final solo and a trumpet passage by Davis, which Paul Tingen characterized as plaintive and introspective. According to him, live music shows typically developed toward reaching a final climax, but Davis' concerts "often dissolved into entropy". On Agharta, Tingen said, a "deep sadness" hung over the music as the energy of the "Wili (= For Dave)" piece "slowly drained away" to the record's fade out. Unlike Agharta's American release, the Japanese edition ended with nine additional minutes of atmospheric feedback, percussion, and synthesizer sounds.[37]

Title and packaging

The back cover design by Tadanori Yokoo, who was inspired by the legendary city of Agharta

Agharta's title was proposed by CBS/Sony as a reference to the subterranean utopian city.[45] The city's legend was one of several Eastern versions of the Hollow Earth theory proposing that an ancient high culture originally lived on Earth's surface but was forced to flee below because of some political or geological crisis.[46] The myth depicted the city as a divine source of power, claiming that its inhabitants were highly spiritual, advanced beings who would save the Earth from materialism and destructive technology after a great cataclysmic event.[47] It was first conceived by 19th-century French thinker Louis Jacolliot as a land ruled by an Ethiopian ruler, while Christian hermeticist Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre described it as "drowning in celestial radiances all visible distinctions of race in a single chromatic of light and sound, singularly removed from the usual notions of perspective and acoustics."[13]

The album's artwork was designed by Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo, who had been creating silkscreen prints on themes of Agharta and Shambhala the year before the concert; his artwork for Carlos Santana's 1974 album Lotus featured such themes.[48] Yokoo found his growing popularity in Japan distracting and moved to the United States, where he was able to get more of his work published. After returning to Japan, he received a phone call from Davis, who had seen his work and wanted him to create an album cover for the Agharta record.[49] Before designing the cover, Yokoo listened to a tape of the concert, meditated, and thought about his reading of Raymond W. Bernard's 1969 book The Hollow Earth; critics thought he had been inspired instead by the psychedelic drugs popular at the time.[50] While Bernard wrote that the city existed in a large cavern in the center of the Earth, Yokoo believed "Agharta could be down there under the sea like Atlantis or even hidden in the jungle like the lost city of El Dorado."[51] He also drew on elements from other Eastern subterranean myths and Afrofuturism when designing the artwork.[52]

The front cover depicted an advanced civilization with a vast landscape of skyscrapers and red, sunburst-like flames rising out of the cityscape as representations of Agharta's power.[53] Yokoo used a combination of collage, airbrushing, and painting techniques as he had with his previous work, along with postcards collected from his trips to Tahiti and New York City; the cityscape on the front cover was taken from one of his postcards.[49] The back cover showed the city submerged in water, embedded in coral reefs, and hovered over by a diver, fish, and a squid ascending from the city.[51] According to graphic designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, Yokoo depicted groups of jellyfish, coral reefs, and brightly colored fish to suggest an association between Agharta and Atlantis.[50] The foreground of the back cover's illustration featured a reptilian creature. German cultural studies researcher Dagmar Buchwald interpreted this image as an allusion to similar ideas about Lemuria, a mythological continent during Earth's prehistory that was inhabited by an advanced civilization later forced under the Earth's surface after its homeland was destroyed by a great flood.[51]

On the back cover, a UFO was also depicted either ascending or descending in a spotlight over Agharta, while the album's inside packaging featured images of winged superhuman beings known as the Agharta supermen, who guarded the city's entrances and secret tunnels.[54] An inscription in the original LP's gatefold sleeve explained the connection between the UFO and the Agharta supermen: "During various periods in history the supermen of Agharta came to the surface of Earth to teach the human race how to live together in peace and save us from wars, catastrophe, and destruction. The apparent sighting of several flying saucers soon after the bombing of Hiroshima may represent one visitation."[51] The album's 1976 North American release had different artwork designed by John Berg, the art director from Davis' U.S. label Columbia Records.[55] In its liner notes, an inscription said the record should be listened to at the highest possible volume, while Davis was credited for the arrangements.[56] After it was released, Macero received a complaint from Columbia's accounting department about Davis being compensated $2,500 per arrangement, arguing that none of the music sounded as if it had been arranged.[57]

Reception and legacy

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
All Music Guide to Jazz 5/5 stars[22]
Christgau's Record Guide A[58]
Down Beat (1976) 4/5 stars[59]
Down Beat (1991) 5/5 stars[60]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music 4/5 stars[61]
Musichound Jazz 5/5[62]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz 3.5/4 stars[63]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide 4.5/5 stars[64]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide 3/5 stars[65]
Sputnikmusic 4.5/5[66]

Agharta was originally panned by critics in 1975, becoming the most widely criticized of Davis' double albums in the 1970s.[67] According to The Stranger's Dave Segal, it was one of the most divisive records ever, challenging both critics and the artist's core audience much in the same way Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (1975) had that same year.[68] In The New York Times, Robert Palmer wrote that Agharta was marred by long stretches of "sloppy, one-chord jams", disjointed sounds, and a banal quality clearly rendered by the impeccable Japanese engineering. He complained that Davis' use of the wah-wah pedal inhibited his ability to phrase notes and that the septet sounded poor "by rock standards", particularly Cosey, whose overamplified guitar "whined and rumbled like a noisy machine shop" while relegating Lucas to background riffs.[69] Jazz Forum critic Andrzej Trzaskowski believed Fortune seemed to be the only jazz musician on the record, finding his solos often flawless while disparaging the performances of Davis, Lucas, and Cosey, whose guitar and synthesizer effects he found pointlessly brutal. In his opinion, the individual segments performed did not cohere as a whole and were further hampered by the clichéd "rock phraseology" of the guitarists, whom he said lacked wit, harmony, and taste.[33] Ian Carr, a biographer of Davis, felt his trumpet sounded fatigued, dejected, and out of place with the band's intense rhythms and monotonously noisy guitars; in general, he found the music "too non-Western in the sense of too much rhythm and not enough structure".[70]

In The Village Voice, Gary Giddins penned an angrily dismissive review of Agharta. A few days after it was published, he was sent a package full of large Q-tips, industrial-strength scouring pads, and a card that read, "The next time you review Miles Davis clean out your head."[71] Although Giddins dismissed the message, Agharta grew to become one of his favorite albums from Davis' electric period, as he reassessed its dramatic elements, relentless tension, and what he claimed were the best performances of Fortune and Cosey's careers. He later wrote, "there really is not a moment when the music fails to reflect the ministrations of the sorcerer himself."[72] Nathan Cobb from The Boston Globe wrote positively of the record in 1976, calling it "a kind of firestorm for the '70s" with a "positively cosmic" rhythmic foundation. Davis, he said, remained "the one who leads the others through the unknown waters of electronic jazz rock".[73] Robert Christgau named it his best work since Jack Johnson and an "angry, dissociated, funky" record, featuring Foster's versatile, unpretentious drumming and a reed performance by Fortune that was the best "on a Davis record in this decade".[58] In Down Beat, Gilmore said the band performed best on side one and side three's breakneck openers, where Cosey's ferocious playing "achieved a staggering emotional dimension" lacking on the slower segments, which he felt were redeemed by Davis' elegiac trumpet.[16] The concert itself was received enthusiastically by the Osaka audience. "I had no idea what [they] were going to do", Henderson recalled. "At the end of the day they gave us a standing ovation that was almost as long as the concert."[14]

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Back in the mid-1970's, fans who had formed emotional attachments to the moody soundscapes of Filles de Kilimanjaro and In a Silent Way had trouble adjusting to the electronic firestorms of Agharta. While Mr. Davis was being treated for two broken legs and a bone disease, a newer generation of listeners and musicians was inspired by the abrasive music his last band of the 70's had recorded.

— Robert Palmer[74]

Davis performed a few more concerts and studio sessions with the band, but his health issues worsened. He retired after Agharta was released, citing physical, spiritual, and creative exhaustion. The album was reassessed positively by critics in the years following his retirement, as were On the Corner and Get Up with It, and in 1980 he returned to recording music.[75] Davis abandoned the direction he had pursued on those records, instead playing a fusion of jazz and rock far more melodic and accessible to audiences, until his death in 1991.[76] In January of that year, Agharta was reissued in the U.S. by Columbia on CD; Tingen was of the opinion that this remaster was inferior to the original LP in sound and mix quality.[77] Sony/Columbia later remastered the album again as part of their Miles Davis reissue campaign and Master Sound series. To correct the inconsistent sound quality on previous CD remasters such as Agharta, the label used Super Bit Mapping for the Japanese Master Sound edition, which Tingen deemed the better version.[78] The new remaster was made available in the U.S. for the first time in 2009, when Agharta was one of 52 albums re-released in mini-LP replica sleeves as a part of Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection, a box set released by Sony Legacy.[79]

According to Mtume, Agharta was the culmination of Davis' electric experiments beginning with On the Corner, while jazz guitarist Henry Kaiser deemed it the best band performance of jazz's electric era.[80] In a reassessment of Davis' career, Richard Cook named it among his best works and the apex of the music he began to explore on Bitches Brew (1970). In addition to possessing an "epic" sound and scope, Agharta was "a great band record", in Cook's opinion. "Even though Davis contributed only telling details, he stills cued exceptional performances from his men."[81] Writing in MusicHound Jazz (1998), Steve Holtje credited Davis with conducting the album's "heroes" to sculpt "moments of shattering beauty and soul-rending vehemence" during both quiet and loud passages.[62] Davis biographer Jack Chambers believed it was far better than most of his other electric albums; the "Maiysha" and "Jack Johnson" segments, Chambers wrote, "magically brought into focus the musical forces over which many thought Davis had lost control."[82] From Tingen's perspective, it represented the "high plateau" of his electric explorations, superior to Dark Magus and Pangaea; because Davis had given the band leeway for constant interplay, the music exhibited a more "organic and fluid quality", with a greater variety of textures, rhythms, timbres, and moods.[29] Reflecting on his live 1970s records, J. D. Considine contended that Agharta's "alternately audacious, poetic, hypnotic, and abrasive" music had endured the passage of time best.[83] In the All Music Guide to Jazz (2002), Thom Jurek considered it to be inarguably the "greatest electric funk-rock jazz record" while declaring "there is simply nothing like Agharta in the canon of recorded music."[22]

Despite being one of Davis' lesser-known records, Agharta belonged to a period in his career that influenced artists in punk rock, new wave, and British jazz.[84] It inspired a generation of musicians to focus on cathartic playing rather than precise instrumentation and composition. Down Beat critic Bill Milkowski credited Cosey's excursive style for "spawning an entire school of 'sick' guitar playing" and claimed that the combination of Fortune's acerbic sax lines atop Foster, Henderson, and Lucas' syncopated grooves were 10 years ahead of Steve Coleman and Greg Osby's M-Base experiments.[85] Tingen found Cosey's solos amazingly revealing and still ahead of their time when heard in the 21st century: "Sometimes growling, scurrying around all corners like a caged tiger, sometimes soaring like a bird, sometimes deliriously abstract, sometimes elegantly melodic and tender, his electric guitar concept is one of the most original to have been devised on the instrument."[86] In Christgau's opinion, "the noises he produced for the second half of side one comprise some of the greatest free improvisations ever heard in a 'jazz'-'rock' context."[58] According to Nicholson, Agharta and other jazz-rock albums such as Emergency! (1970) by the Tony Williams Lifetime suggested the genre was progressing toward "a whole new musical language ... a wholly independent genre quite apart from the sound and conventions of anything that had gone before". This development dwindled with the commercialism of jazz in the 1980s, he said, although Agharta remained a pivotal and influential album through the 1990s, especially on artists in the experimental rock genre.[87] Along with On the Corner, it was a major influence on the Beastie Boys' 1994 hip hop album Ill Communication.[88]

Track listing

All compositions by Miles Davis.[89]

Original double LP

Side one
  1. "Prelude (Part 1)" – 22:34
Side two
  1. "Prelude (Part 2)" / 3. "Maiysha" – 23:01
Side three
  1. "Interlude"[nb 1] – 26:17
Side four
  1. "Theme from Jack Johnson" – 25:59

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[91]

Musicians

Production

  • Takaaki Amano – assistant engineering
  • Shigeo Anzai – photography
  • John Berg – artwork (North American release)[55]
  • Mitsuru Kasai – assistant engineering
  • Kiyoshia Koyama – liner notes
  • Yoshihiro Kumagai – liner notes
  • Teo Macero – production
  • Tadayuki Naitoh – photography
  • Keiichi Nakamura – album direction
  • Tamoo Suzuki – engineering
  • Tadanori Yokoo – artwork

Charts

Chart (1976) Peak
position
American Albums Chart[92] 158
American Jazz Albums Chart[92] 16
Chart (2006) Peak
position
Japanese Albums Chart[93] 243

References

  1. ↑ Wilson 2003, p. 60.
  2. ↑ Freeman 2005, pp. 10–11, 155–156.
  3. ↑ Freeman 2005, p. 10; Cole 2007, p. 27.
  4. ↑ Freeman 2005, pp. 10, 110.
  5. ↑ Cole 2007, p. 27; Freeman 2005, p. 155.
  6. ↑ Freeman 2005, p. 134.
  7. ↑ Freeman 2005, pp. 7, 152.
  8. ↑ Freeman 2005, p. 156; Cole 2007, p. 28; Chambers 1998, p. 276.
  9. ↑ Chambers 1998, p. 277.
  10. ↑ Cole 2007, p. 28; Cook 2007, p. 257.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chambers 1998, p. 274.
  12. ↑ Cole 2007, p. 27; Chambers 1998, p. 158.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 Szwed 2004, p. 342.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Cole 2007, p. 27.
  15. ↑ Szwed 2004, p. 342; Chambers 1998, pp. 274–5; Alexander 2007.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, p. 271.
  17. ↑ Szwed 2004, p. 342; Tingen 2001, p. 328.
  18. ↑ Chambers 1998, p. 275.
  19. ↑ Tingen 2001, p. 164; Chambers 1998, p. 276.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Tingen 2001, p. 152.
  21. ↑ Tingen 2001, p. 72.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Jurek 2002, p. 315.
  23. ↑ Reynolds 2011, pp. 182, 269.
  24. ↑ Alexander 2007; Tate 1992, p. 80.
  25. ↑ Bayles 2001, p. 3; Tingen 2001, p. 151.
  26. ↑ Bayles 2001, p. 3.
  27. ↑ Cole 2007, p. 27; Bayles 2001, p. 3.
  28. ↑ Tingen 2001, p. 163; Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, p. 271.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 Tingen 2001, p. 163.
  30. ↑ Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, pp. 271, 330.
  31. ↑ Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, p. 271; Tingen 2001.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Cole n.d..
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Trzaskowski 1976, p. 74.
  34. ↑ Tingen 2001, p. 165; Cole n.d..
  35. ↑ Cole n.d.; Tingen 2001, p. 328.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Tingen 2001, p. 165.
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Tingen 2001, p. 164.
  38. ↑ Chambers 1998, p. 276.
  39. ↑ Murray 1991, p. 202; Tingen 2001, p. 328.
  40. ↑ Nicholson 1998, pp. 128, 130.
  41. ↑ Murray 1991, p. 202; Nicholson 1998, p. 130.
  42. ↑ Murray 1991, p. 202.
  43. ↑ Milkowski 2000, p. 508.
  44. ↑ Freeman 2005, p. 152.
  45. ↑ Szwed 2004, p. 342; Tingen 1998.
  46. ↑ Buchwald 2012, p. 9.
  47. ↑ Tingen 1998; Buchwald 2012, p. 109.
  48. ↑ Buchwald 2012, p. 109; Thorgerson & Powell 1999, p. 21.
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 Thorgerson & Powell 1999, p. 21.
  50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 Thorgerson & Powell 1999, p. 20.
  51. ↑ 51.0 51.1 51.2 51.3 Buchwald 2012, p. 110.
  52. ↑ Buchwald 2012, p. 109.
  53. ↑ Buchwald 2012, p. 110; Thorgerson & Powell 1999, p. 21.
  54. ↑ Buchwald 2012, p. 110; Thorgerson & Powell 1999, p. 20.
  55. ↑ 55.0 55.1 Anon. 1976.
  56. ↑ Mandel 2007, p. 82; Szwed 2004, p. 343.
  57. ↑ Szwed 2004, p. 343.
  58. ↑ 58.0 58.1 58.2 Christgau 1981, p. 103.
  59. ↑ Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, p. 270.
  60. ↑ Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, p. 306.
  61. ↑ Larkin 2011.
  62. ↑ 62.0 62.1 Holtje & Lee 1998.
  63. ↑ Cook & Morton 1992, p. 272.
  64. ↑ Considine 1992, p. 180.
  65. ↑ Gilmore 1985, p. 57.
  66. ↑ Campbell 2012.
  67. ↑ French 2009; Christgau 1981, p. 103.
  68. ↑ Segal 2015.
  69. ↑ Palmer 1976, p. REC2.
  70. ↑ Segal 2015; Brodowski 1982, p. 34.
  71. ↑ Giddins 2006, p. 186.
  72. ↑ Giddins 2006, pp. 186–7.
  73. ↑ Cobb 1976, p. A8.
  74. ↑ Palmer 1985.
  75. ↑ Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, p. 118; Segal 2015.
  76. ↑ Tingen 1998.
  77. ↑ Anon. 1993, p. 329; Tingen 2001, p. 142.
  78. ↑ Tingen 2001, pp. 142, 286.
  79. ↑ Barton 2009.
  80. ↑ Tingen 2001, p. 163; Higgins 2001.
  81. ↑ Greenlee 2007; Cook 2007, pp. 258–259.
  82. ↑ Chambers 1998, pp. 234, 275.
  83. ↑ Considine 1992, p. 182.
  84. ↑ Graham 2009; Palmer 1985.
  85. ↑ Alkyer, Enright & Koransky 2007, pp. 306–307.
  86. ↑ Milkowski 2007.
  87. ↑ Nicholson 1998, p. 130; Harrison, Thacker & Nicholson 2000, p. 614.
  88. ↑ Reynolds 2011, p. 182.
  89. ↑ Anon. 1975.
  90. ↑ Anon. 1991.
  91. ↑ 91.0 91.1 Anon. 1996.
  92. ↑ 92.0 92.1 Anon. n.d.(a).
  93. ↑ Anon. n.d.(b).
Footnote
  1. ↑ The titles "Interlude" and "Theme from Jack Johnson" were misprinted all editions of the album; "Theme from Jack Johnson" was meant to refer to the side three, not "Interlude".(Chambers 1998, p. 275)

Bibliography

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Further reading

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External links

fr:Agharta et Pangaea (Miles Davis)

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