Miles Davis
The Complete On the Corner Sessions
Sony Legacy

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The six CDs in this set -- representing more than six-and-a-half hours of music -- pack a real punch. Miles Davis's profound recordings for Columbia Records during the 1960s and 1970s were rigorously spliced and edited by producer Teo Macero. What sounded seamless and elegant on the original vinyl was actually the result of Macero's delicate editing of much longer and more discursive pieces. Legacy Records has done a great job bringing out the full recordings of Miles's seminal Columbia Recordings, often with hours of unreleased materials. The albums were classics, but the full reissues are even better, allowing a listener to stretch out with his favorite music for hours. In the final entry of its Miles series, Legacy tackles Miles's darkest and most controversial albums -- On the Corner, Big Fun and Get Up With It. Shortly after Davis recorded these sessions, he dropped out of the musical scene for some time. Maybe that's why this music is so sinister and powerful. Dismissed at the time of its release in 1972 by some jazzheads as mindless fusion noodling, On the Corner strove to introduce a new form of music. Miles combined the rhythm of James Brown with the open song structures of Karlheinz Stockhausen. There was lots of electronic noise, wah-wah trumpet and loud guitars. Miles even forsakes the trumpet on occasion to play keyboards. Always pushed by a forceful rhythm, the tracks on OTC sound unlike anything we hear today, and it is one of Miles's most influential albums. It is often credited for inspiring so-called post-rock music. But to look at On the Corner simply as the music that inspired Tortoise doesn't do it justice. It deserves attention today because more than 30 years ago Miles tried (and succeeded) to create a new form of music -- something that has rarely been accomplished during the intervening years.

-- Leopold Froehlich