Miles Davis: Pangaea – A genre of its own

On the front page of the Audio Federation website Neli and I get to post our favorite albums of the day, week, whatever.

[These favorite albums take the place of what was previously our Linkedin profile photos. Neli got tired of seeing this photo of herself everywhere. I think it is a great photo of her. Women… 🙂 ]

I currently have ‘Miles Davis Pangaea‘ as my Audio Federation front page album.

This double-album is part of a set of concerts during Miles’ electric funk space jazz phase. Agharta is another double live album of this concert series from Osaka, Japan. To a large extent Black Beauty, Dark Magnus, In a Silent Way, and even Miles Smiles are other examples of his of this genre. And as far as I am concerned he has this genre all to himself. Although Live-Evil is much more widely available, and many consider it part of this phase of his, I do not – it is more commercial electric jazz-fusion – nice but without the ‘space’ and ‘deep rhythm’ these other albums mostly have (Miles Smiles is missing a lot of the deep rhythm of these others, but it still stands above Like-Evil IMO in terms of groove and aggressiveness).

Here is what Amazon has to say:

“(2-LP set) Recorded on the same day as Agharta (FMN 811), Pangaea‘s 2 LPs of material are culled from the evening performances at Osaka’s Festival Hall. Featuring just 2 songs, both clocking in at over 40 minutes, Pangaea shows Miles’ band really stretching itself to the limit. Live electric jazz-fusion from the undisputed master of the genre. 180 gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket with a reproduction of the original black and white insert.”

I discovered these albums back in the late 70s, early 80s. There was a store on the ‘Hill’ in Boulder that sold lots of cutouts for $3 and lots of mostly Japanese and some European (mostly German) imports for $7. I spent a large percentage of my wealth here at the time [not much to speak of, but it was a lot to me…]. I got this as a Japanese import.

It was definitely an OMG experience that has lasted for 40 years. At the time it was also life-affirming in the sense that an ‘old’ master of ‘boring’ jazz could do something that was so now and ‘with it’.

There is nothing out there like it that I have come across. They lay down a groove with a significant beat and then overlay electric jazz and space all over it for over 40 minutes [on the album].

Make no mistake, this is NOT Kind of Blue. This is more like Funkadelic if you imagine them at the end of a week of playing in front of 100,000 people after being dosed to the gills over and over again. Or Sun Ra if Sun Ra knew what the heck a beat and a melody was.

There are some bootlegs of these concerts. Haven’t played them in awhile, so forget what quality they are [the music itself is, of course, awesome in the sense that It does Inspire Awe].

Neli likes these albums too and they are accessible to the average listener –  just Not At All what you would expect to hear from Miles Davis.

The sound quality is B+. It is really quite good IMO. I have mostly played the original Japanese import LP, though we have been playing the CD for convenience lately. 40 minute songs do require a commitment – there are no obvious places to stop the rhythm once it gets started – so you have been warned 🙂