Agharta
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Agharta
- Artist: Miles Davis
- Rating:
- Release Date: February 01, 1975
- Total Time: 97:34
- Type: Live, Instrumental
- Genre: Jazz
Review
Along with its sister recording, Pangaea, Agharta was recorded live in February of 1975 at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan. Amazingly enough, given that these are arguably Davis' two greatest electric live records, they were recorded the same day. Agharta was performed in the afternoon and Pangaea in the evening. Of the two, Agharta is superior. The band with Davis -- saxophonist Sonny Fortune, guitarists Pete Cosey (lead) and Reggie Lucas (rhythm), bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, and percussionist James Mtume -- was a group who had their roots in the radically streetwise music recorded on 1972's On the Corner, and they are brought to fruition here. The music on Agharta, a total of three tunes spread over two CDs and four LP sides, contains the "Prelude," which clocks in at over a half-hour. There is "Maiysha" from Get up With It and the Agharta "Interlude," which segues into the "Theme From Jack Johnson." The music here is almost totally devoid of melody and harmony, and is steeped into a steamy amalgam of riffs shot through and through with crossing polyrhythms, creating a deep voodoo funk groove for the soloists to inhabit for long periods of time as they solo and interact with one another. Davis' band leading at this time was never more exacting or free. The sense of dynamics created by the stop-start accents and the moods, textures, and colors brought out by this particular interaction of musicians is unparalleled in Davis' live work -- yeah, that includes the Coltrane and Bill Evans bands, but they're like apples and oranges anyway. Driven by the combination of Davis' direction and the soloing of Sonny Fortune and guitarist Pete Cosey, who is as undervalued and underappreciated for his incalculable guitar-slinging gifts as Jimi Hendrix is celebrated for his, and the percussion mania of Mtume, the performance on Agharta is literally almost too much of a good thing to bear. When Cosey starts his solo in the "Prelude" at the 12-minute mark, listeners cannot be prepared for the Hendrixian energy and pure electric whammy-bar weirdness that's about to come splintering out of the speakers. As the band reacts in intensity, the entire proceeding threatens to short out the stereo. These are some of the most screaming notes ever recorded. Luckily, since this is just the first track on the whole package, Davis can bring the tempos down a bit here and there and snake them into spots that I don't think even he anticipated before that afternoon (check the middle of "Maiysha" and the second third of "Jack Johnson" for some truly creepy and beautiful wonders). While Pangaea is awesome as well, there is simply nothing like Agharta in the canon of recorded music. This is the greatest electric funk-rock jazz record ever made -- period. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi| Aghar Piar Milegha (Album by Mira Spinosa) | |
| Agharta (2006 Album by Agharta) |
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Agharta (album)
| Agharta | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Live album by Miles Davis | ||||
| Released | 1975 (Japan); 1976 (U.S. and worldwide) | |||
| Recorded | February 1, 1975 at Osaka Festival Hall, Japan | |||
| Genre | Jazz Fusion, jazz-funk | |||
| Length | 97:34 106:37 |
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| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Teo Macero | |||
| Miles Davis chronology | ||||
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| Agharta | ||||
Japanese edition design by Tadanori Yokoo.
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [1] |
| Robert Christgau | A[2] |
| Mojo | favorable[3] |
Agharta is a double album recorded live in concert by jazz trumpeter Miles Davis in 1975. Both Agharta and its sister recording, Pangaea, were recorded on the same day, February 1, in Osaka, Japan. The Agharta concert took place during an afternoon matinée, whereas Pangaea was recorded in the evening. Months after these concerts, Davis—suffering ever mounting health problems and depression—retreated from public musical activity. This makes Agharta and Pangaea his final albums of new material until the 1981 comeback LP The Man with the Horn.
On all versions of Agharta the titles of tracks 1 and 2 on the second disc are mixed up, therefore the second disc's first track, mislabled "Interlude", really should be the one labeled "Theme From Jack Johnson". The track starts off with a performance of "Right Off" from Davis's A Tribute to Jack Johnson LP and goes into a quote of the theme from "So What", a tune from Davis's 1959 LP Kind of Blue after which the band segues into a performance of "Ife". Track 2, mislabled "Theme From Jack Johnson", is really a continuation of "Ife" which segues into the set's concluding piece, a lengthy workout in A minor commonly referred to as "For Dave".
The master tapes for both Pangaea and Agharta were quite heavily remixed when prepared for release on CD. This led to a lot more details and separation of instruments being heard on the original LP releases, as well as an overall richer and fuller sound. This has somewhat been corrected with two Japan-only CD reissues of Agharta: the Master Sound Edition released in 2000 (which features a mix similar to the original North American and European LP releases) and the 2006 DSD remastered Mini-LP Edition (which features the extra dense, reverb-heavy mix previously exclusive to the original Japanese LP release).
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Contents
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Track listing
Vinyl LP
- Record One
Side A "Prelude (Part One)" – 22:34
Side B "Prelude (Part Two)/Maiysha" – 23:01
- Record Two
Side A "Interlude" – 26:17
Side B "Theme from Jack Johnson" – 25:59
1991 Columbia/Legacy CD Edition
Disc One
- "Prelude (Part One)" – 26:01
- "Prelude (Part Two)" – 6:33
- "Maiysha" – 12:20
Disc Two
- "Interlude" – 26:50
- "Theme from Jack Johnson" – 25:16
2000 SME Japan Master Sound Edition
Disc One
- "Prelude" - 32:31
- "Maiysha" - 13:10
Disc Two
- "Interlude/Theme from Jack Johnson" - 60:55
2006 Sony Japan DSD Edition
Disc One
- "Prelude" - 32:30
- "Maiysha" - 12:21
Disc Two
- "Interlude/Theme from Jack Johnson" - 51:36
All compositions by Miles Davis
Personnel
- Miles Davis – electric trumpet with wah-wah, organ
- Sonny Fortune – soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, flute
- Pete Cosey – electric guitar, EMS Synthi A, percussion
- Reggie Lucas – electric guitar
- Michael Henderson – electric bass
- Al Foster – drums
- Mtume – conga, percussion, water drum, rhythm box
Production
- Producer – Teo Macero
- Director – Keiichi Nakamura
- Engineer – Tamoo Suzuki
- Assistant Engineer – Mitsuru Kasai, Takaaki Amano
Alternative versions
The 2000 and 2006 Japanese CD pressings indexes both "Prelude"s into one track, and the entire second disc is also indexed as one CD length track. [1] The index and track lengths used on the 2006 Japan DSD Edition is again used in the 2009 release included in the Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection box set, along with the original Japanese cover and Japanese LP mix. Additionally, 2011 saw the reissue of this double album on 180-gram vinyl on the Four Men With Beards label, #812, now being distributed by City Hall Records.
References
- ^ http://www.allmusic.com/album/r106187
- ^ "CG: Miles Davis". Robert Christgau. http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Miles+Davis. Retrieved 2011-11-03.
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5pvTfVSUW
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