Manafonistas

The latest in Columbia/Legacy’s Miles Davis Bootlegs series has four discs representing all four nights played by the trumpeter’s new electric band as the support for Laura Nyro at the Fillmore East in June 1970. That controversial and brilliant group included Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett (mingling electronic abstractions and wah-wah-guitar effects on keyboards), and the recurring setlist offers revealing glimpses into the real-time evolution of classics like Directions, Bitches Brew and It’s About That Time. The group was also hovering between acoustic, standard-song jazz and raw avant-rock, so longtime Davis staples also get fresh treatments. Just hearing It’s About That Time variously played with unadorned trumpet simplicity, or amid menagerie synth-sounds and dense drum shuffles, or accompanied by Airto Moreira’s windy flute, in successive nightly interpretations, is fascinating. But a funky Willie Nelson (later to appear on the Jack Johnson album), the rousing, choppy Directions, and the magnificent riff of Bitches Brew are just a few of the highlights subjected to continuous reappraisal. It’s a chapter in the story of 20th-century music as a whole, not just the minutiae of jazz. (John Fordham, The Guardian)

 

 
 
 
A)
 
1. Tom Verlaine: A Stroll, from: Songs and Other Things
2. Tom Verlaine: Rain, Sidewalk, from: Songs and Other Things
3. Burnt Friedman: Deku No Bo, from: Bokoboko
4. Dirty Projectors: Dance For You, from: Swing Lo Magellan
5. The Flaming Lips: Ashes in the Air, from: The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwiends
6. Labradford: C. of People, from: Prazision LP
7. Hilary Hahn & Hauschka: Ashes, from: Silfra
8. Lost in the Trees: Garden, from: A Church That Fits Our Needs
9. Chris Watson: Sierra Tarahumara, from: El Tren Fantasma
10. Joanna MacGregor & Andy Sheppard: The mercy seat (Cave), from: Deep River
11. Six Organs of Admittance: Hold But Let Go, from: Asleep On The Floodplain
 
 
B)
 
1. Geoff Barow / Ben Salisbury: 301 – 305, from: DROKK – Inspired by Mega-City One
2. Geoff Barow / Ben Salisbury: Exhale, from: DROKK – Inspired by Mega-City One
3. Geoff Barow / Ben Salisbury: Lawmaster, from: DROKK – Inspired by Mega-City One
4. Cakewalk: Perpetual, from: Wired
5. Can: Your Friendly Neighbourhood Whore, from: The Lost Tapes
6. Can: Dead Pigeon Suite, from: The Lost Tapes
7. Astrid: Suite, from: High Blues
8. Philip Jeck: Vinyl Coda IV
9. Cheek Mountain Thief: Nothing, from: Cheek Mountain Thief