THE COMPLETE BITCHES BREW SESSIONS

If you've escaped with your life and sanity from hearing the original Bitches Brew and are looking for more,this is great value for money and a great way to extend your listening to see the whole picture of one of the greatest and more innovative albums ever recorded.It includes many more contributions from Joe Zawinul and plenty more of Miles Davis.The original album is a landmark in jazz history and two more discs are a great way to appreciate it.

However....If you haven't heard the original album I suggest you do before purchasing the set as it certainly may not be your cup of tea.But if you think you've got an open enough mind you may certainly enjoy this.It's certainly essential listening for jazz fans but more so a great addition to a collection for everyone else.

When it was released in 1969, the landmark original release of Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" hit the ears of unsuspecting listeners with such force, that it, along with his previous release "In a Silent Way," has since often been cited as spawning the entire jazz fusion genre - and while it isn't nearly as polished as the offerings of the many and varied offshoot fusion bands that followed, it has a savage beauty all its own.

It was dubbed by one reviewer as merely "a line drawn in the sand," and though this assessment seems harsh, it is remarkably astute. Though "In a Silent Way" had a sort of abstracted dissonance underpinning its comparably placid and sometimes uplifting themes, it remained fairly calm and soothing. In contrast, "Brew" takes its listeners down a daunting path marked by hostility, aggression, and searing atonality. And though it makes a stunning impression, it is remarkably unstructured, with almost all the musicians emitting random bursts of notes at odd intervals - even Chick Corea seems hard-pressed to keep up with the seemingly illogical ideas as they are expressed. But through these abnormally cascading and clashing themes, a tapestry of sound unlike any other is woven into a complete and entrancing whole.

Now, seeking to expand the original touchstone fusion album, the 4-Disc "Complete Sessions" offers a more in-depth look into the workings of Davis' mind during his fusion phase, and the evolution of his style leading up to the album's release. Though the original album made an impressive and powerful statement on its own, and arguably gave birth to the genre, for fusion aficionados, at first glance this would seem to be a worthy expansion of the album to own. But has it only been produced as a money-grabbing tactic, or is it worthy of your collection?

The base album's tracks are preserved in their original order, though Feio, the bonus track which was released on some versions of the album, appears later as the first track of disc 4. The original album is as expressive and poignant as ever, though I personally found it challenging when I first heard it, and only began to fully appreciate it after several listens. To get through the entire original album alone can be a draining experience - thusly you may want to break up the "Complete Sessions" over a number of listens. But when the new material begins on the 2nd disc, from the Eastern groove of "Great Expectations" to the ambient first notes of "Recollections" and the coda of two shorter tracks, the "Sessions" provide enough material for any fan of fusion and Davis to enjoy, though a less avid listener like myself might subside on the base tracks alone.

I don't think anyone can credibly argue that "Bitches Brew" isn't a groundbreaking album. But like any true masterpiece it can also be a very difficult and often divisive experience, even today. The music existed outside its time in 1970, and nothing like it has been heard since.

I can't even review the album itself, as it defeats any attempt at a systematic rating...imagine trying to judge a sunrise, or a tsunami, using only the ProgArchives star system. But I can at least approach it indirectly, through this flawed 1998 box set, which doesn't quite live up to its grand (but misleading) title. These aren't the unedited tapes used by producer Teo Macero to assemble the "Brew" album, but a compilation of studio sessions from the weeks and months afterward, when Davis was searching (in a hit-or-miss manner) for new musical worlds to conquer.

The original 1970 album was never an end in itself. It was more like a road map for Davis toward a possible bridge between the purity of his Jazz roots and the raw power of his avant-funk Götterdämmerung later in the decade. In the turbulent aftermath of "Bitches Brew" the trumpet player was more an explorer than a pioneer, and his intermittent studio forays grew more radical as they became less focused. The music on these four discs (actually two-and-one-half: the rest of the set is the "Brew" album itself, re-mastered but intact) illustrates that uncertainty with several long, formless, but compelling journeys into a musical terra-incognita far beyond even the frontiers of "Bitches Brew".

And here's where my rhetoric fails me. The paragraph that would have followed (before I wisely deleted it) was top-heavy with metaphysical weirdness: a futile attempt to describe music unbound by any stylistic tethers, to Jazz, Rock, Classical, Indo-Raga, or Ambient Shoegaze. Not every note is perfect, or needs to be. But it's the chaos behind the order that gives the music its vitality, and the order in the chaos that keeps it real.

The problem here, at least for confirmed fans, is that a lot of it has already been heard, on the albums "Big Fun", "Live-Evil", and the belated compilation "Circle in the Round". There's a logical sense to collecting the music in the order it was recorded. But logic isn't always a blessing where the creative impulse is concerned, and the unpolished building blocks can't match the imposing majesty of the final construction.

For Miles Davis, continuing to play traditional Jazz was "like going to bed with a real old person who even smells real old" (his quote). If true, this new musical direction would have been like bedding a temperamental odalisque on a divan of roses: a memorable experience to be sure, but is she the same alluring siren when exposed the next morning without any make-up?