TS: Miles Davis's Agharta or Pangaea

Bad-ass, thanks phone.

I agree with jimmy wine on Al foster...much as I enjoy these records, I'd love them more if he just kept his damn hi hat closed. Dude can sound like the inside of an airplane for chrissakes.

Still hoping for a nice complete box of those Japanese shows someday

fwiw there is a killer live show that has been on d!me before, 6/17/73 I think? pre-FM show in Japan, RIYL these albums

I'd love them more if he just kept his damn hi hat closed.

Agharta was the first Miles record I ever heard, and Foster's open-hi-hat was off-putting at first; I was expecting super-tight heavy funk, not sloshy shunk. But his approach really grew on me, and those records need the looseness and density that the open hat adds to.

The story behind the Japanese cover art is pretty interesting.

Good piece on these records' 40th (!) anniversary:
http://thequietus.com/articles/17152-miles-davis-agharta-pangaea

yeah, I still feel the same way about these albums (see upthread), but this is a very good read. thanks

Any news regarding the proper reissuing of that entire stellar period (Miles live gigs in 1974-75)? It's been well documented that he played dozens of concert in that period, and all we have is Dark Magus, Agharta and Pangaea. That's a bloody shame.

On a similar topic, does anyone know if there exists a complete recording of Tatu Part 2, that fades out on Dark Magus? Just as Miles had hit the monstrous groove and is playing some of the most menacing trumpet of his career, some smartass cutting the master decided to fade it out just so that he could fit it into an LP. Unbelievable!

The passage of time has been more than kind to Miles. Today, 40 years after those concerts were played, it gets extremely hard to grasp why have so many fans/critics been so against the divine music that Miles was making in 1974-75? It feels like a weird time warp that anyone could have been against such breathtaking beauty. Luckily, they seem to have stopped making such idiots, so today we're free to enjoy this god-like music without the annoying whining from the heathen and to demand more of it!

It is crazy that no reissue/boxed set/domestic remaster nothing has ever come forth here.

The recent *Newport* box has a set from late 1973 with the core of that lineup (Cosey, Lucas, Henderson, Foster, Mtume)...it screams, especially the version of "Turnaroundphrase" (a.k.a. "Moja" on *Dark Magus*, or "Zimbabwe" on *Pangaea*).
http://www.milesdavis.com/albums/miles-davis-at-newport-1955-1975-the-bootleg-series-vol-4/
Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux_ZXCC86_c

The Heat Wraps just got to the shows right beforehand:

https://theheatwarps.com/2022/04/28/1-30-1975-kokura/

By the time the septet reached the southwestern end of the island a week later for a performance at the Kokura Civic Center (demolished in 2003 to make way for a city park), its raison d’être seems to have shifted dramatically. Though “Ife” remains the heady centerpiece of the night and one of the most thrilling versions on record, the vast majority of the set is wound tight, deeply funky and downright jubilant. With this the final concert before the performances recorded for the Agharta and Pangea live LPs, it’s fascinating to hear a version of the septet so different from the one documented just two days later.

This is going to be a bit Startrekman, but it must have been that EMS Synthi doing those weird whistling sounds that seem to loop around tracks on Agharta? I kinda always thought it might have been the organ through some oscillator or something, but it is going on even when Miles is playing trumpet (unless someone else was playing the synth like Cosey).

I kinda think these records are of the type you really cannot get them loud enough. It would be nice to have them blasting through some huge stage PA across some big meadow and be able to live within them.