THE MAN WITH THE HORN

This is the first Miles Davis' album I ever heard, strange right? Well, someone offered it to my father a long long time ago, and it's the only one we have at home, so I decided to give it a try.

The first song is my favorite, "Fat Time" is dirty, heavy, acid, uncomfortable, and it's great, the pulsing bass line combined with dissonant, heavy trumpet, gives a really cool feel to the song and makes it very enjoyable. Next is "Back Seat Betty" is a real funk tune, with some slapping bass and distorted, shoegazy guitars, and again, very dissonant and unmelodic trumpet, as "Fat Time", very powerful, very funky, very strong.

So, then we have "Shout", the catchiest tune in this album, but great anyway, really quick, funky music, very flashy and upbeat, the first song to catch my attention the first time I heard it, very good. In the last three songs we have a great, beautiful song, in between two not-so-good songs. "The Man With The Horn" is the only vocal track in the album, and it's a fairly chilled and soft tune, with beautiful melodies and also really catchy, but as for "Aïda" and "Ursula", two they are as the rest of the album very pleasant, but I haven't so much to say about them, they are pretty in the vein of the album, only not as catchy or groovy.

So, this is a great album, probably very underrated for being of Miles' later works, but is very chilled, very funky, and very good indeed.

The Man with the Horn is the coming back record after Miles Davis latest record four years ago. Miles Davis had troubles with his drug addiction and it took him some time to drop this addiction and meanwhile he stopped producing music. This record is critisized as not being as good as before quitting the drugs, but I think this record offers some really good material.

Miles Davis did always succeed in finding great musicians for his band. In this set-up a really awesome guitarist was hired: Barry Finnerty. He plays as fast as John Mclaughlin and delivers some really impressive guitarsolo's on the first side of the record. The mood is dark and the compositions are interesting. Take for example "Back seat Batty" which has a thick garageguitar theme. This song takes you from the garage to a ghetto with sinister trumpets to get back to the garagetheme again: really great!

As is the case in many works of MD the compositions are made around some theme and between the repeating of the theme all the musicians get the chance to show their soloskills. The Man with The Horns is no exception to this rule, except on side two. The first song still has the main structure, but the second song is a soul song with lyrics. And the last composition is just some jamming with no real theme. The second side is some backdraw compared with side one. The lyrics are fine, but not really interesting and the jamming without structure is not as good as the earlier composition on side one.

Side one: 4 stars/ Side two: 3 stars.