I could be mixing it up with something else but I'm fever dreaming Brian Eno had to be listening to this Miles Davis recording of a David Crosby song, "Guinnever," when Eno collaborated with Jon Hassell to make his much beloved by me (and, yes, his hilariously pretentiously titled), Fourth World, Vol.1: Possible Musics (1980) and his solo album On Land (1982), both abstract portraits of "possible" geographic spaces.
Apparently, when Crosby first heard Mile's version of his song he was so disapproving Davis kicked him out of his studio. Crosby's beautiful melancholy folk pastoral, "Guinnevere," is stretched truly beyond recognition, and to nearly a half an hour of music in the version I share below. It's like the barest pulse of a melodic bass line from the original, everything stretched out as if surveying strange mysterious landscapes, not unlike Eno's later ambient albums. This barest ambient impression of a melodic bassline in "Guinnevere," which Xgau says actually was already coming from Mile's Sketches of Spain classic, functions as ambient launchpad into percolating tempos of the thick steamy tropics, fluttering in and out of exotic slow-building bird mating rituals, Arabian sandstorms and lunar space landing keyboards, ghostly horn fantasias, epic ambient tableaus of jazzy space rock soundtrack music.
Miles recorded "Guinnevere" in 1970, with a lot of his fusion regulars of the day, Wayne Shorter, Airto, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Bennie Maupin; a long list of musicians contributed to the recording. The album with a seven minute version came out in 1979, on Circle in the Round, just in time for Eno, always in the mix in those days, working with Jon Hassell, experimental trumpet player (actually, to my crude ears he sounds more than a little like a spacey foghorn tape-manipulated version of Miles), and composer (Vol. 2 of the Fourth World series on his own is equally stirring; and he has other very good ambient albums as well). And then Eno's On Land in '82; again, sonically sketching geographic terrain like Mile's "Guinnevere." There it is several of Eno's key ambient moves in early electric Miles.
By ambient, big word now, I mean in the OG sense: unimposing and slow developing soundscapes that work well as background music. They fill the space without overwhelming the space; you can ignore the music if you want but if you do pay attention to it you can sometimes find ambient music mesmerizing and in moments physically and/or emotionally stimulating. Eno's original definition of ambient music, basically.
I know there's all kinds of other shades of ambient music now but I'm going back to Eno's '70s originals, and even before that, the proto-ambient music source, early electric Miles Davis, 1970 to 1974, outtakes from his Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, On the Corner sessions, stretched out, sprung like Stockhausen ambient jazz landscapes, exotic soundscapes, beautiful black and blue soundtracks like "Guinnevere."
Like a space age Black Power music; Miles electric '70s peers with some of Sun Ra or Coltrane's most out there free spiritual jazz. But Miles is strictly secular, his spirituality rooted in the blues. His electric music an Afro-futurist meditation on the blues in 1970s that sounds cold, fierce, and visually other-worldly. Miles on another high modernist musical tip, like music writer Greg Tate was always writing about him.
I still don't know how much this is Miles and how much producer Teo Macero, a topic of some controversy apparently. This half hour long suite was left off the studio release of Bitches Brew (1970) and appears first on the 1998 release of The Complete Bitches Brew sessions. In the same vein try "Calypso Frelimo" off Get Up with It (1974). Space rock funk at another early ambient peak for Miles.
Miles was a mother in these years; a jazzy space rock exorcist unable to escape his demons. Churning out beautifully dark and visionary music.
Here's the Crosby, Stills, & Nash original, 1969, all melancholy pastoral acoustica, beautifully forlorn harmonies, "she/Ma'lady/we shall all be free," or for the purposes of enjoying the song anyway. Works for me but how Miles got from this CSN song to his electric voodoo Miles in outer space version I do not know but at any rate what a near miraculous act of musical creativity. Crosby warmed to it years later.
I know electric Miles is way too slow and freaky austere for casual CSN pop music fans; think "Almost Cut My Hair" stretched and slowed down to three times its original length. But if you're into jazz or ambient or exotic longform background music early electric Miles and Eno should not be missed. Sonic safari music that goes well with reading. And strong coffee. Recommended.
If it took CSN for you to read this far I don't have any problem with that.
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