IN A SILENT WAY

OK, sonny Miles, you're in deep crap now. You were only tolerated by pure jazzers last year with your 'lectric poop, but you had to mess it up, screw it up, you no good judas-sing traitor and your hoodlums friends calling themselves your new band. Please refund us from your private pocket. - The REAL jazzers society!!!

OK, guys I admit it, I took money (loads of it) from these backwards idiots to start my review with their ugly hate splattered all over this PA page, but since Max won't reimburse my professional costs... . It's rather dismaying that some people actually thought this way and started yelling, covering IASW's superb layers of ambiances, thus not being able to actually hear how excellent an album this is. With his quintet out of the way, he assembled his new group from the two versions he had present on FDK, Shorter Hancock & Williams from one part, and Corea & Holland from the other and adding Joe Zawinyl on organ and McL on electric guitar.

And right from the first notes you get an organ layers underlining a great electric piano and McL's superb guitar interventions and the 18-mins+ Shhhhh/Peaceful track is under way for then-unheard musical soundscapes that were both written and improvised. It must be noted that if Miles was breaking ground, he wasn't the only one as he was aware of his buddy Mal Waldren "playing with a bunch of German hippies and doing some interesting shit".

The flipside is no less interesting with the slower title track divided into three sections, the middle one being a much faster and longer called "it's about that time", where Herbie and Chick layer the bottom of the track on electric piano, while Zawinul gradually increase volume on his organ and heads to the forefront, .before leaving it to Miles to wrap it up before the title track returns. So if you progheads were drooling at two keyboardists playing together, this album has three of them and collaborating beautifully together.

The only thing missing to this album is a drawn artwork ala BB or MITS and while the present picture might be the last one featuring him until he came back in the 80's. Another slight remark is that the albums just before this one (FDK & MITS) were nearing one hour, that you wonder why this one is clocking below the 40 minutes and the remasters presented no bonus tracks, either real or alternate takes. Of course there are the "complete IASW sessions" boxset, but I found that to be deceiving as most of the sessions were acoustic and there were still some FDK tracks included. A first rate album, bringing the rock realm to whomever wanted among jazzers, and the first album that awakened the rock crowd to a jazz realm. Groundbreaking, and breathtaking

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