MILES DAVIS QUINTET: NEFERTITI

Nefertiti is one more Miles Davis masterpiece, but that time from late sixties. So, the band is different from his late fifties: future fusion keyboard star Herbie Hancock, future foundator of Lifetime ,great fusion band, drummer Tony Williams, future fusion star ( Weather Report and solo works) sax player Wayne Shorter and one of the greatest jazz/fusion bassist Ron Carter. Sound very seriously,isn't it?

And the music is great again. In other manner,than ten years ago,more complex. All sound is based in acoustic Hancock piano and light rhythmic Tony Williams' layout with competent bass line and some brass solos.

You can perfectly feel there, that musicians came to their next step - into the fusion - very nearly.But - it still jazz, in it's best form, but still 60-s post bop.

The album is complex, with very competent players, one of the best from it's time ( in jazz field). And you can hear all the team of future fusion stars there as well. So, what else you need,just listen! But for prog purists - for jazz fusion please try a few albums later.

Miles Davis has made many, many, many albums. Nefertiti, by many critics, is considered one of his masterpieces, even though it isn't as well known as other Davis classics, such as "Kind Of Blue", "Bitches Brew", "In A Silent Way", or the debut "Birth Of The Cool", just to name a few. But, in my humble and not so expert jazz listener point of view, this album can't be considered a masterpiece. Sure, some fabulous moments are present, like in "Fall", the best song in the album in my opinion, or in "Pinocchio" and "Riot". Even in the longer songs the nice moments aren't completely absent, but still, they didn't appeal much to me: "Madness" and "Hand Jive" are the two perfect examples. I find it kind of strange reviewing a jazz album like "Nefertiti" in a progressive rock site. The inclusion of Miles Davis is absolutely necessary, because of his fusion period, that started the genre practically, but many of his albums (most of them), don't really belong here, like this one.

'Nefertiti' is Miles' last jazz record before he starts slowly sliding toward the rock side of things and it makes for a grand farewll as he and his band are at the apex of their creativity and stretch the genre for about as far as it will go. The title tune opens the album and presents a bizarre repeating abstract melody without any solos as the band, especially Hancock and Williams, interject energetic harmonic and rhythmic variations as the tune continues to come around and around. In similar modern developments, 'Fall' doesn't so much have a melody as more like somber horn colors that come and go as Hancock and Shorter occasionally solo while being backed by Williams' stop-start rhythms and subtle meter changes. Surely the old formula of playing a head tune followed by everyone taking a few rounds for a solo has been thrown out the window on most of this album. Likewise Hancock and Williams continue to re-write what a rhythm section can and should do while someone is soloing, introducing more freedom and abstraction with each passing album the quintet records.

'Hand Jive' closes out side one with high speed aggressive almost free hard bop in a style similar to Ornette Coleman. 'Madness' opens side two with more free ranging hard bop until the middle of the tune where everyone drops out and Hancock launches into a solo that sounds more like modern composition than jazz. I get the feeling that Miles really enjoyed the sophistication that Herbie's concert hall sensibilities brought to the band and encouraged him in that direction. Side two closes out with two more highly original takes on the post bop genre this band created with an aggressive piano solo on 'Riot' and finally another solo from Miles on 'Pinocchio'.

After this record Miles slowly began to shift his band toward electronics and the psychedelic groove. Although Miles made a lot of great music in the worlds of fusion and rock, re-listening to this record I can see why so many fans felt such disappointment and even sadness when Miles decided to shift gears. Although in Miles' mind it was time for a change, sometimes it does seem like a shame that all of this sophisticated abstract beauty and hip beatnik cool got replaced with loud amps, wah-wah pedals, extra wide flare jeans, high-heeled stacks, cocaine and thousands of admiring slack jawed hippies.

Nefertiti is a sometimes fast, sometimes peaceful, and occasionally playful farewell to all- acoustic jazz configurations from Miles Davis. From this point on, Miles began the gradual process of going electric, so if you're a stick-in-the-mud purist you may even consider it to be an end to your explorations of his music - though I personally can't understand anyone who'd deprive themselves of In a Silent Way. As it stands, it's more or less a continuation of the sort of musical approach featured on Miles Smiles, so a change in gear was probably necessary at this point, but it's still an infectious listen which is consistently entertaining.