Agharta

Description

Recorded in Osaka during an afternoon performance in 1975, this searing live session captures US jazz visionary Miles Davis in full rupture mode. His septet-featuring Sonny Fortune, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, James Mtume, Reggie Lucas and the incendiary Pete Cosey-abandons traditional form for something wilder, darker and more combustible. On ‘Prelude’, riffs collapse into molten polyrhythms, with Davis hovering at the fringes while the band drives forward like a storm system. ‘Interlude / Maiysha’ cools momentarily into a woozy, psychedelic slow jam before building again, while ‘Theme From Jack Johnson’ returns to the jagged propulsion of his earlier electric period. The standout is Cosey: his guitar work on this recording, distorted and wrung through wah, predicts noise, punk-funk and post-rock in one furious blur. Produced by Teo Macero and long a touchstone for jazz experimentalists, it remains one of Davis’s most challenging-and rewarding-recordings.