Customer Reviews

Aura

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With this album, Miles takes a departure from the electronic music he had done on recent albums. Here he returns to a more orchestrated approach using a big band. However, this is not traditional big band jazz. Instead this recording has more of a classical feel. If you are looking for something commercial and "poppy", this album is not it. On the other hand, if you enjoy hearing Miles experiment with some different sounds, this is a rather enjoyable recording.

This is the last major work from Miles. 1985. Just as he worked with arranger Gil Evan's in the 1950s, Miles steps in and works with the orchestra of Pele Millkenberg.

Of course the music is totally different. This is dissonant almost-classical music with huge structres spread out over what was a double album. It is electronic and intense. As always, David waltzes into the maximus, and signs his glorious name with his spare soloing.

The link to the rest of Davis' work is John McGlaghlan, who shows up just like he had fifteen years before, lending his rogorous axe work to the grand composition.

This is not B-Brew, In A Silent Way, Sketches, Porky, or Birth Of The Cool, but after four years out of retirement playing light jazz and pop, the sheer ambition of this is refreshing.

If you took all the major works above, they would be bookended by Birth Of The Cool and Aura. And that makes this final moonshot essential.

According to an ever changing array of critics (cynics) over the years, Miles has "sold out!" about a dozen times. I'm old enough to remember the hue and cry when he went from bop to cool to Gil Evans to even cooler jazz to modal to a movie soundtrack to trance music to electrified jazz to jazz-rock and beyond. So if you have some familiarity with Miles, try to flense your mind of any expectations for this music before listening. It would be ideal if you heard this without knowing who it was (right away, anyway). It's really one of Miles' most affecting performances. He considered it one of his best efforts.

Let me start by saying that I am a relatively new jazz fan. I come from King Crimson and Omar Rodriguez to fall in love with jazz music. Having most of Miles albums that matter (The Genius of Miles box set) I decided to experiment a bit with the underrated albums such as this one. I love this record. This is part of the missing pop era box set on the genius box set. It is an album i can recommend to people in general, not just jazz fans ( last person i recommended Bitches Brew to asked me what was wrong with me). Buy this album and experience a different groove from Miles.

In a career that spanned five decades and saw the creation of albums as diverse as Kind of Blue, On the Corner and Doo-Bop, this album, Aura, remains arguably the most unusual recording Miles Davis ever made.

In December of 1984 Miles went to Denmark to receive the prestigious Sonning Prize, an award usually reserved for classical musicians. Performed at the ceremony was Aura, a suite of music for big band written by Danish trumpeter and composer Palle Mikkelborg. On that occasion Miles himself played on the last movement of the piece. Miles returned to New York, but Aura continued to haunt him and early in 1985 he returned to Denmark to record it. In the recording process the piece underwent radical alterations and what began life as a tribute became a true collaboration between Miles and Palle Mikkelborg. On the record Miles plays on eight of the ten movements, soloing extensively. In the studio he improvised new sections of music, and in response Mikkelborg reworked the instrumentation, creating around Miles's improvisations new melodic lines to underpin, accentuate or comment on his playing.

The sound of Aura is singular. It is "jazz", but firmly European in flavour, drawing as much from western classical music as it does from the blues. Harmonically, Mikkelborg is clearly inspired by 20th century classical composers like Messiaen and Stravinsky, but also by Gil Evans, whose inspiration can sometimes be heard in the way Mikkelborg voices the chords (the way the notes of the chord are "assigned" across the various instruments).

The jazzy big band is augmented by synthesizers, the electric guitar of John McLaughlin and also by electronic drums. These drums date the album in some ways, but once accepted as simply another colour in the sound, they in fact fit in quite well.

This fusing of elements - 20th century classical harmony with the blues, big band instruments with electronics - along with a certain coldness in the recording itself, combine to create a sound that is defining, and how the listener feels about that sound will probably determine whether or not they enjoy the album. For some it may prove too great a leap, which is a tremendous shame for the Miles fan. Because as far as trumpet playing goes this is one of Miles's best works. Miles is so obviously inspired by this music; he plays at length, using both open and muted horn. His phrasing and his choice of notes are marvelously tight - he is simply "on" in a big way here, and it's a joy to hear.

There are many stand out moments. On the second movement, White, Miles takes a muted solo, his playing high and tender. He gets that "caught in the throat" sound that was all his, a sound that seems to have no business coming out of a trumpet. An oboe answers him and Miles goes on to solo more extensively, very up-front in the mix, at times echoing and doubling himself.

Then there is "Red". which highlights Miles's glorious open horn sound. His phrasing and technique are superb. He plays with caged anger, at once brooding and skittish. The piece has a wonderfully tense atmosphere, giving off a constant threat of violence. Throughout, always kept low in the mix, electric guitars chug and growl. Synthesizer chords stab out and Miles reacts to them. The feel is that of a prize fighter in the ring, moving, circling, staring with hooded eyes, his focus tight.

The open horn is heard again on "Blue" a bouncy, joyous reggae in 7/8 time. Miles is wonderful here, his sound is warm and full of life, his high notes clean and pure. Towards the end the rhythm dissolves and Miles switches to the Harmon mute, soloing over a series of mysterious brass chords. These chords dissolve in their turn, leaving us with chimes and a harp over which Miles plays some beautiful little nursery rhyme phrases which sparkle with charm and affection.

Orange, too deserves mention, not least for John McLaughlin's incisive and muscular playing. He takes three choruses before Miles steps in. Miles seems to recapitulate his own career in miniature here, laying on some swinging be-bop runs with the mute, before switching to an open horn solo that uses the full range of the trumpet. As the piece moves to a close the rhythm suddenly changes, giving us a taste of the density and relentless drive of Miles's mid seventies albums.

Aura is one of the most under-rated and over-looked albums Miles Davis ever made, and it's a shame. Not only is it the only time after 1962 that Miles would create new music with a big band, it also features some of his best playing from his last decade. Apart from the two tracks on which he lays out, Miles is all over this album. His open horn sound, which he used less and less often towards the end of his life, is very much on display here. It's also a record that Miles himself thought highly of - enough to mention it in his autobiography more than once.

Aura certainly requires an open mind, though. Big band it may be, but we are worlds away from the Gil Evans albums of the fifties and early sixties. It is a long suite of music, at times intellectual, at times playful, always genuine. It's not a album one is likely to fall in love with on one playing, but it will repay your time and effort, if given a chance. If you are a Miles Davis fan (as distinct, perhaps, from a jazz fan) Aura is an essential album.

Th reason why I am giving only 4 stars to "Aura" is just because this is the "last Miles album" IMHO. Anything that cames later, was a little bit dazed and confused (with all respect to Zepp's fans). This is an album to be heard with some points in mind.

"Aura" is one of those albums I want to like, but the more I listen to it, the more, quite frankly, I don't.

Conceived as a 9 part suite to frame Miles Davis' playing by Danish musician Palle Mikkelborg, the album moves from one ambient-ish electric/orchestral jazz movement ot the next, more as a piece of modern classical than as jazz (not that I have anything wrong with the former, mind you). The suite as a whole holds together reasonably well, but it feels overlong ("Orange"), cliched ("Electric Red") and quite frankly, like a bad reject from a Brian Eno record that someone overdubbed a couple drums and Miles Davis on top of ("Red"). This isn't to say it doesn't have its moments-- the first part of the aformentioned "Orange" features some of Miles Davis' finest playing in the latter part of his career, for example, it's just that there's not enough on here for me to actually listen to it.

This isn't to say it's unlistenable, mind you, but "Aura" is the album everyone talks about but that I don't know that anyone actually plays, certainly today is the first time I've listened to it since I picked up this most recent reissue (2001, if I recall). Some folks love this one, but I could easily recommend skipping it.