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Every time the needle of my turntable drops on "On The Corner," I cling like to Ariadne's thread, to the rhythm of the charleston that, wicked and paranoid, accompanies me through this phantasmagoric Babel of sound.
Oh yes, because around it it's all a bubbling of wah-wah and horns, a blossoming of flipped-out cartoon sounds and an explosion of ultra-exotic percussions.
Everything contributes to creating a state of trance: from the guitars of John McLaughlin and David Creamer, which produce a constant arrhythmic nausea, to the Fender Rhodes of Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock that puff frantically, to the bass of Michael Henderson, grumbling like an old toothless grouch. In all this, Miles' wah-trumpet is "working class", it works as a team, pouring acid upon acid. His rare solos are like a precious spice on the occasional mantra-like openings of sitar and tablas.
"On The Corner" oozes blackness, it's a funk spit on the pure souls of jazz. It's an album with alienating dynamics, that relaunches itself continuously, relentlessly; and you reach the end emptied, exhausted, and stare stunned at the Ariadne's thread you find in your hands...
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