Customer Reviews

Agharta

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Like the most challenging music out there, this album is both a blessing and a headache. For musicians and jazz aficionados it's a, ever-changing stew of grooves, rhythms and blows to get lost in; for those more accustomed to the easy stylings of Miles's first quintet and the like, this is no more difficult a listen than an hour of jackhammering outside the window. Miles himself doesn't show the easy, soothing playing that made him famous in the first place; he sounds clipped, ragged and mad at the world. Considering that he had hip problems and had previously broken both legs in an accident, this might not be far from the truth.

His band might not have been quite as angry, but they still played with the same divine fire. The double-percussion team of Foster and Mtume lay down one dense African groove after another full of rhythms so thick you could wade through them; Cosey and Lucas bend their six-strings to some of the most primal wails this side of Hendrix; Henderson provides just the anchor on bass that everyone needs. Playing opposite Miles on sax was Sonny Fortune, and while he's no Wayne Shorter (but who could be?) he lays down a couple solos that I'm still trying to get my head around after a year of listening. The music was largely improvised and loosely sketched out, but rooted in some previous Davis sounds. "Maiysha" shows up in the track list, but I also hear pieces of "Right Off" and "Ife" among others. You'd probably have to be familiar with his entire body of work from this period to catch them all.

By the time of the two final concerts documented on Agharta and its counterpart Pangaea, Miles and crew had become a well-oiled machine, adept at weaving rock, jazz and funk into a head-spinning jungle brew that still confuses and amazes listeners 27 years later. It's jazz taken in a direction no one else had gone; it's a batch of hot rock grooves with tribal rhythmic underpinnings; it's the angry burning of a man in pain and a top-notch crew flourishing under his direction. And this show is only the Jekyll to Pangaea's Hyde; the later concert was even darker, heavier and closer to chaos. I'd recommend Agharta first of the two, but if you haven't heard any electric Miles it may be easier to start with B-Brew or Jack Johnson first. Agharta is a trip through the dense African bush, not for the faint of heart but those who love a good challenge.

I first heard the old, unremastered release of Agharta about 10 years ago, and I have been transfixed by Miles' electric recordings ever since. The only way I could describe this album to the uninitiated- imagine the thickest, dirtiest funk you've ever heard, like early Funkadelic times Infinity. Heavy wah across the boards. Now imagine a legendary trumpet player (Davis), an extremely funky sax player (Sonny Fortune), and an insane guitar player, Pete Cosey, A.K.A. 'Evil Hendrix', trading off solos over a constantly shifting background. Now imagine a drummer and percussionist (Al Foster and Mtume, respectively), banging away into eternity, like this music could. Imagine all of the accompaniment emulating percussion, from the bass to the rhythm guitar, and even to all the other players when they are not tearing solos. Now add to this a brooding, dark undercurrent pervading the proceedings. The result is a storming, mindbending and addictive stew that is Agharta.

Enough about the music. On to the sound quality, the only reason you would even be looking at this ridiculously expensive import: It really is no hyperbole to say that the Japanese remastering is light years ahead of the original release. There are instruments brought up in the mix that you couldn't hear before, and much of the murkiness surrounding the original release has been corrected. The solo lines are no longer quiet and obscured, and in fact this edition features the sort of sound you might expect from a studio release. I would recommend this edition to true Davis fans who already know what they are in store for and are looking for the best possible sound for his live electric documents. For those who haven't heard it, I would listen to it first since not everyone is going to like music this intense and, for lack of a better word, extreme (and I don't mean that in a Mountain Dew kind of way). As far as I am concerned, music doesn't get any better than this.

I love this album, and contrary to the reviewer who claims this goes sour after a few listenings, I just keep going back to it. The first disc is amazing. In a lot of ways, it is a minimalistic fusion of rock and jazz, and many of the solos are about sound more than chops, but it has an incredible groove to it and a lot of intensity. It's amazing this was the morning show and Pangaea was the evening show of the same day. I've been unable to see to the bottom of that disc through its dark, turgid murmurings. This one is not sunny by any means, but just more joyous in its savagery, like Rite of Spring or Miraculous Mandarin.

I bought Agharta because I had heard and read that it was just about the worst music Miles Davis had ever made. Even people who claimed to sort of like Miles' electric music said that his mid 1970s stuff like Agharta was loud, incomprehensible, cheap and empty.

So I had to listen and decide for myself.

After the 1950s, jazz had morphed from popular dance music to scholarly "head" music or easy listening, background music. By the late 1960s, music made for other jazz musicians or critics was killing jazz and Miles repeatedly said he had no desire to be an esteemed limb on a mummified corpse.

So Miles moved to electric music.

Miles had a hard time moving his music from acoustic to electric, and freely admitted it. To play loud electric body music, Miles needed to rebuild his music from the ground up. Miles spent a lot of time studying how Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Muddy Waters and Sly Stone could create loud, electric music that extended the DNA of American black music and African music in new directions.

Agharta represents the culmination of Miles' quest to form his own, ultimate electric African-American black music band. Agharta was recorded live in Japan in February, 1975 just before Miles retired for 5 years due to his body falling apart from a host of nasty illnesses.

Agharta can sound like a monotonous, cacophonous, meandering mess if you are not familiar with or like high tempo African music or James Brown at his most funkified.

The first songs (Prelude I and II) need to be played as loud as "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath for their groove to bite. Played loud, the dense mix opens up and you feel you are an ant in the middle of a gargantuan, grooving rhythm machine. At loud volume, Miles' trumpet parts sound perfectly placed within the maelstrom. At low volumes they sound so weak they almost disappear. On the original vinyl album Miles instructed listeners to play the record as loud as possible. He was right. If you don't like loud music, Agharta is not for you.

The music and performances on Agharta are unique. It's as if Miles was trying to synthesize his entire knowledge of African and European music into one band, one set, and one concert. As in mixing paints, such attempts often result in making mud. Miles and his bandmates did make mud from time to time, but in 1975 he knew he had to take that risk or play Kind of Blue until he died -- or just stop playing.

Miles' trumpet playing on Agharta is particularly intriguing. Played through a wah-wah pedal, it often sounds like an unusually expressive mini-moog synthesizer played extremely unusually.

Miles plays with uncanny sensitivity to what the other band members are playing. He either completes their rhythmic phrases or plays phrases so abrupt than any member of his band can finish them, or not. Miles' playing forces you to listen not to what he is playing at any moment but to what the rest of the band is playing at that moment. Miles' trumpet solos force you to listen to everything but his solo -- turning the whole concept of a solo on its head.

Hearing Miles play on Agharta, I can almost hear him saying through his horn, 'I know this sounds very different from what you expected, but listen anyway, because I think more of you than to just give you what you expected.''

Miles has assembled a fine cast of musicians to close the books on one of the most incredible periods in American music. Technically, this concert was the second to last in this period, (Pangea was recorded in the evening of the same day and is as equally as outstanding) but to me represents this group at their best.

Al Foster, Metume, Michael Henderson and Reggie Lucas lay down the deeply African grooves that set the stage for some incredible excursions by Miles and the boys. Although the solos are fierce and engaging, the real story here is the sound of the whole. From scathing funk to minimalist blasts, the journey is at once demanding and danceable, thought provoking and fun.

The haunting melodies hang over rhythms that pull you out of your seat while the solos glide through the funk. Miles' solos are few, but are pure Miles - cool, dry and emotional. Sonny Fortune has never sounded better. And Pete Cosey lets rip some wild, funked up noise. Hang on to something!

It's Sly meets Hendrix in B.B.'s crib with Edgar Varese coming for diner.

It's brainy funk for the masses.

......Miles recently got elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

This is why. The energy, the vibe, the electricity, the danger of taking musical chances, screaming electric guitars, Sonny Fortune blowing your head off, that dark voodoo funk.........

.......like another poster said, this really is why modern jazz is on life support. Nobody takes chances like this anymore, nobody explores, nobody adds different things to the jazz mix. Agharta is worth a dozen of Wyntons' jazz "theme" albums.

This album is well worth your money. I just thank God they recorded this show.

Yeah, Robert Fripp, who knows a thing or two about heavy, intense music himself from his work with King Crimson, calls Agharta "A wallpaper shredder." A most poetic way of stating the fact. There just isn't anything as intensively heavy and funky you can purchase in CD format. Agharta is the ultimate Acid-Funk-Jazz-Metal trip. Try to imagine the loudest, funkiest band with a guitar player who is every bit as wild as Jimi, their laying down a groove with Parker-esque alto sax playing dazzingly be-bop riffs over the top of that and you kind of get the idea of how this CD sounds

I first purchased Agharta on Lp back in 1976, was blown away then and I'm blown away now by the CD release. I don't see a problem with the mix as another reviewer has complained. I do think it is time to update Agharta, Pangaea, and Dark Magus with 24 bit remastering. And speaking of these three releases, they sort of go together. Agharta and Pangaea were recorded on the same day, Agharta was the earlier concert. It is fierce, furious music, dark and frighteningly intense. There is a lot more of Miles's spacey organ on Agharta than Pangaea and his playing on Pangaea is probably better. I think both releases are fantastic and you can't own one without the other. Dark Magus is very similar but Dave Liebman is the sax man rather than Sonny Fortune. Azar Lawrence also appears on Dark Magus. Really, if you hear any one of these three CDs and like it, you want to own all three.

This is by far the heaviest, funkiest band ever to set foot on a stage anywhere, at any time. I sincerely believe that when Miles slipped into retirement after these concerts were recorded, there simply wasn't anywhere else to go, they represent the pinnacle of Miles's electric phase (as a true artist rather than the 80's Miles the entertainer).

The reviewer below who states he'd rather listen to Live-Evil or Live at the Fillmore March 7, 1970 is right in the sense that Miles's playing on those releases is far superior. But the music, the fundamental concept of Miles in 1970 and Miles in 1975 were very very different. It isn't a rational comparison. It's like comparing a group of race car drivers to a group of head-hunting cannibals! I love 'em all!

I agree this album doesn't make for good dinner music. By the same token I wouldn't think about bringing a box of chow with me to eat during a concert. The best way to listen to this album is from start to finish, all four sides (in vinyl terms). That way you can evolve with the music itself, which shifts moods organically, starting from the raucous funk at the beginning to the quieter, introspective music at the end. I don't think you can really appreciate the second half without having gone through the emotional journey of the first half. And the journey through the second half is a dark one, indeed.

Then take a break and play "Pangaea" from start to finish and appreciate how Miles was using a bagful of the same tunes with each concert, but never playing them the same twice. They were just tools to let him create a spontaneous emotional expression, and at this stage of his playing the process is everything.

I don't like the remastering of the CD. It seems to bury a lot of sound and put other things way too much up front. I still listen to the vinyl version I bought in '76.

Columbia recorded HOURS of music on one day of Miles' 1975 Japan tour; Agartha and Pangaea are afternoon and evening concerts from the same day, and made up two two-disc vinyl sets when released. The sound, even with astonishing changes in volume and pitch, was recorded with amazing clarity for a live pre-digital recording of amplified instruments.

Fans bought Agartha,(the US release) listened, said "HOLY &^%&*$#@!"and then saved up to buy the (then) import-only Japanese CBS-Sony Pangaea, (with the special "Easter Island" disc center labels and matching obi-packaging) which was even better.

So what happened when they transferred them to CD? SOMEONE at CBS messed things up. The second guitar part is now often pushed WAY back in the stereo imaging, and the miking for the SNARE drum, of all things, is brought WAY forward. Dave Liebman described playing with Miles during this period, soloing with Michael Henderson playing bass behind him, and when Miles (as happens on this album) had Henderson "lay out" for a few bars, the sudden absence of bass being almost enough to knock him over. That "towering" arena bass sound, clean and window-rattling on the vinyl, is muddy and cluttered up here in odd places.


So it's an important piece of music for 20th century music fans to have, but they can't get the GOOD version right now...

for people who have a spark of curiosity about the legendary music of Miles Davis, knowing where to begin the search can be a frustrating issue. with a back catalogue as vast as a small continent, figuring out where to start and where to go can be tricky. especially considering the many phases of Miles' long and adventerous career. he spawned many followers and imitators and made many enemies along the way. a larger than life figure who would dominate the jazz scene for decades and whose music still holds power and brilliance even to this day. Personally, i have been such a big John Coltrane fan for so many years, that i somehow blindly overlooked Miles Davis' recorded output for a long time. it's just been in the past 4 years or so that i have gotten the opportunity to dig into Miles' absolutely stunning and quite frankly, overwhelming music. whereas Coltrane was the master of melody, Miles is the master of the mood. a true genius whose musical impact and influence is felt even stronger today than it was when he was alive.

funk is a musical genre that i am not particularly fond of. and since i was under the impression that Miles Davis abandoned jazz for a funky sound for his controversial electric 70's period; i was in no big hurry to dip my toe into these waters. i took a chance with Agharta because a friend of mine who knew i liked jazz and had an open ear for avant garde music, recommended it to me. the first thing that caught me off guard was the cover. a weird looking collage type of piece with two women who appear to be in a hawaiian jungle paradise are looking over a city at sundown. but instead of a sun, there's the words "Agharta - Miles Davis." on the flip side, there's a similiar scene, but instead of a jungle with women, there's an undersea theme going on. with batches of coral and seaweed overlooking the city. there's a jellyfish floating past a diver in the sky and a few fish drifting out of the corner. in the distance, a spaceship is hovering on a beam of light. wow. based on the cover art alone, this album is either going to be so bad it's good, or something that i just cannot anticipate. well, quite frankly, i just had no idea what i was getting myself into.

before i heard this album, i had no conception that music like this ever existed. it's like a savage snarling primal beast who has dipped his entire body in some kind of hallucigenic potion and is dealing out tarot cards while ringing up the devil on a direct line. seriously, some of this music on Agharta is so intense that it is frightening. it's beyond the ideas layed out in Bitches Brew and it's certainly nowhere near the funk of James Brown or Funkadelic. it's like the party in funk music has been overshadowed by a dark strange force that has got your ears in a stranglehold. that dark force is Miles Davis.
his direction in music on this night in Osaka, Japan on February 1st, 1975 is dirty and hungry and just doesn't give a damn what you think! the drums flow like a river of blood and only stop to let the organ make a few stabs into the air, the it's back to the onslaught. when it's time for their solo the guitars creep up like distant radiowaves transmitted from an outerspace swamp. the bass slides around and stalks you like a panther, and the trumpet seems to scream and pitch out a fierce cry that rallies the troops to continue. when you've finally gotten to the last 20 minutes of Agharta, you find yourself floating restlessly in that undersea world pictured on the back cover. you've somehow survived the night, but you'll never be the same again.