Miles Davis
Agharta

As everyone knows, Miles Davis is an extraordinary musician, poetic, communicative, creative, experimental and so on; in short, a complete artist. His completeness and desire to always stay up to date, never copying but rather reworking and mixing the musical past and present, is clearly visible in the live double album I want to present to you today, namely the colossal "Agharta", recorded on February 1, 1975, at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan with a lineup that includes: Sonny Fortune (soprano and alto sax, flute), Michael Henderson (Fender bass), Pete Cosey (guitar, synth, and percussion), Al Foster (drums), Reggie Lucas (guitar), Mtume (conga, percussion, and water drum), and of course Miles Davis on trumpet and organ.

We are in the midst of the electric period, and you can feel it! The master leads his pupils in a long ride of electrified and refined atmospheres, acrobatic solos, and more reflective moments, all orchestrated with class and elegance that are the true trademark of a versatile artist for whom the Jazz label often felt restrictive and who needed to explore and travel in the vast ocean that is music. Moving on to a more in-depth analysis of the double album, we see that the tracks are of considerable length, "Prelude" exceeds half an hour, but this does not make it difficult to grasp; on the contrary, by the end of the listening, you realize that it flows without a moment of downturn, as if it were a single, rich tale whose ending you want to discover, yet at the same time wish it were endless, for how beautiful and captivating it is.

Good old Miles is always perfect and leaves plenty of room for the other musicians, all truly up to the task and very passionate in playing; in fact, they manage to create a very "warm" and personal soundscape that engages and fascinates without ever spilling into sterile and self-serving technicality. Overall, we are faced with a truly exquisite work, beautifully recorded with a composed and silent audience that makes the concert seem almost like a small private jam session, where musicians are free to express themselves without constraints. To conclude this little analysis of mine, I feel I can recommend this album not only to Jazz lovers or fans of the "Electric Shaman" but also to all those who love rock, especially the most "progressive", as here they will find original, fresh, and damn modern compositions, which absolutely do not bear the weight of the years and indeed, like fine wine, the more they age, the more they become a treasure to be jealously guarded for the generations to come.

One last clarification concerns the choice not to highlight one track over another, and this for a very simple reason: the piece in question has a unique mood that makes each song an intimately connected piece, so any mention would be misleading and unnecessary; listening to it all is the only choice, and I assure you, you won’t regret it!