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Agharta is a live double album by American jazz musician Miles Davis. It was recorded on the afternoon of February 1, 1975, at one of two concerts Davis performed at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan; the evening show produced his 1976 live album Pangaea. He performed with his septet—flautist and saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, guitarist Reggie Lucas, and Pete Cosey, who played guitar, synthesizer, and percussion.

The concert was recorded by Sony Records under the supervision of Teo Macero, who produced Agharta. Sony's Japanese division, who ultimately released the album, suggested the titular reference to Agharta, which is a version of the Hollow Earth theory of a mythological subterranean utopia. The album's artwork was done by Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo and draws on both Eastern subterranean myths and Afrofuturism.

Agharta was first released in Japan in August 1975 after Davis had retired. Its music eschews melody and harmony in favor of a combination of riffs, crossing polyrhythms, and funk grooves for soloists to improvise throughout. Widely panned by contemporary music critics, the album has since received retrospective acclaim as an important and influential jazz-rock album. It was reissued by Columbia Records in January 1991. In 2009, Agharta was one of 52 albums by Davis that were remastered and released in mini-LP sleeves as a part of Sony Legacy's Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection.

Background

Festival Hall in Kita-ku, Osaka

After the release of his studio album Get Up with It and his poor showing in year-end magazine polls, Davis had felt that he was losing touch with audiences and listeners by the end of the 1974. He subsequently embarked on his first tour of Japan in 10 and a half years. Between January 22 and February 8, 1975, he played 14 concerts to capacity crowds in large-hall venues and earned enthusiastic reviews.[1] Japanese critic Keizo Takada praised Davis' band as "magnificent and energetic", and wrote that he "must be the genius of managing men and bringing out their hidden talent. He played his music with his band just as Duke Ellington did with his orchestra."[1]

At the time of his February 1 concert at Osaka Festival Hall, Davis was experiencing severe pain from his left hip, which had been operated on almost 10 years earlier.[2] He had been sick with pneumonia throughout the three-week tour of Japan and had a bleeding ulcer that grew worse, while his hip occasionally and unpredictably slipped out of its socket. During the tour, he was unable to work his wah-wah and volume pedals because of the pain in his legs, so he would go down on his knees to press them with his hand. To relieve his pain and continue performing, Davis used codeine and morphine, smoked, and drank large quantities of Heineken beer, and was able several times to perform two concerts in one day, as he did at Festival Osaka.[3]

Recording and production

Davis' two concerts at the hall on February 1 were recorded and released as two double albums—Agharta was released in August 1975 in Japan and 1976 in North America; Pangaea was released in 1976.[4] The former was an afternoon show, and the latter was recorded in the evening.[5] They were recorded by Sony under the supervision of producer Teo Macero.[3]

The first concert began at 4:00 P.M.[3] Davis played both trumpet and organ, and led a septet that featured flautist and saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, guitarist Reggie Lucas, and Pete Cosey, who played guitar, synthesizer, and percussion.[6] The first of their two sets at the concert included performances of "Tatu", "Agharta Prelude", and "Maiysha", which were titled as "Prelude (Part 1)", "Prelude (Part 2)", and "Maiysha", respectively, when they were released on Agharta.[3] "Prelude" was recorded over one and a half sides of the album.[2] The second set included "Right Off", "Ife", and "Wili", which were titled on the album as "Interlude" and "Theme from Jack Johnson", respectively.[3] The titles "Interlude" and "Theme from Jack Johnson" were erroneously reversed on the disc label's track listing and liner notes of all editions of Agharta.[6]

Composition

"Prelude"
A 30-second sample of the song, which is based around a two-chord theme
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Agharta has a more aggressive and dynamic style than the atmospheric sound of Davis' previous electric albums.[7] Its music eschews melody and harmony, and is instead characterized by a combination of riffs, crossing polyrhythms, and funk grooves for soloists to improvise throughout.[8] The album's four segments are unstructured and emphasize the playing of Davis' sidemen rather than his own trumpet.[9] In contrast to his previous recordings, the cadenzas throughout Agharta are dominated by Fortune and Cosey, who generated dissonance and feedback as often as possible.[3] The rhythmic direction of the compositions are occasionally interrupted by densely assembled layers of percussive and electronic effects, including repeated whirring sounds, synthesizer grinds, and guitar sounds run through a ring modulator.[10]

Agharta has been categorized as jazz-rock by music journalists Jim DeRogatis,[11] and Simon Reynolds.[12] According to The Wire magazine, the album's music "offers a drastic intensification of rock's three most radical aspects: space, timbre, and groove".[13] By contrast, Martha Bayles of The New York Times felt that Davis' fusion albums, including Agharta, "take little from jazz, apart from free improvisation (which Davis had spurned a decade earlier), and little from rock, apart from ear-bleeding volume and electronic instruments." She added that the music instead revealed Davis' affinity for minimalism and understated composition.[14] In response to others' categorizations of the music as jazz or rock, Davis insisted that he was simply exploring different directions in music.[15] He elaborated in jazz journalist Kiyoshi Koyama's liner notes for Agharta:

[My] music is strange. Why does it change so frequently? Is it because my life is always changing? My life could never be an open book, so there are many secrets in my music. People don't understand mode[s], Dorian mode, Phrygian mode, electronics, etc., just like they don't understand us. But it's okay, since they don't understand my music, they get surprised. Isn't it great that you can experience surprise through music?[16]

"Prelude" continued the intense groove lapses of Davis' earlier recordings of "Tatu" and "Rated X", but with more pronounced tonality and bass riffs, and more minimalist and repetitive playing by Davis, who was obscured by the rhythm section.[3] The composition is based around a two-chord theme.[2] It develops from a motif that Davis played on trumpet and alludes to it throughout the performance's disjunct rhythms. He directed the flow of the performance when behind his Yamaha organ and abruptly started and stopped the band to shift tempos.[17] "Maiysha" features a samba theme played by Fortune on flute.[6] "Theme from Jack Johnson" opens with his longest turn on alto saxophone. After Lucas' guitar part, Fortune played a shuffle beat based on Henderson's walking bass line and Cosey's rhythm guitar. Henderson ended its long sequence by playing the ostinato from Davis' 1959 composition "So What", while Davis played an extended part on open trumpet.[2] "Interlude" is centered around Henderson's imposing, blues-derived bass line and accompanied by solo statements from the other musicians.[17]

Title and packaging

The gatefold LP's back design by Tadanori Yokoo, who was inspired by ideas about the legendary city of Agharta

The album's title was proposed by Sony Japan.[3] Agharta is a mythological subterranean utopia that acts as a spiritual source of power.[18] It is one of several Eastern versions of the Hollow Earth theory, which proposed that an ancient high culture originally lived on Earth's surface but was forced to flee below because of political or geological circumstances. According to the theory, the highly spiritual and advanced beings of Agharta will save the Earth from materialism and destructive technology after a great cataclysm.[19] Agharta was first conceived by 19th-century French thinker Louis Jacolliot as a land ruled by an Ethiopian ruler, while Christian hermeticist Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre described it as "drowning in celestial radiances all visible distinctions of race in a single chromatic of light and sound, singularly removed from the usual notions of perspective and acoustics."[3]

The album's artwork draws on both Eastern subterranean myths and Afrofuturism. The cover painting, also titled Agharta, was done by Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo, who had been creating silkscreen prints on themes of Agharta and Shambhala the year before Davis' performance in Osaka.[19] Yokoo had heard a tape of the performance, meditated, and thought about his reading of Raymond W. Bernard's 1969 book The Hollow Earth. The front artwork depicts an advanced civilization with a vast landscape of skyscrapers. However, Yokoo felt differently than the book's discussion of Agharta's legendary existence in a large cavern in the center of the Earth: "[F]or me, Agharta could be down there under the sea like Atlantis or even hidden in the jungle like the lost city of El Dorado."[20]

The back cover was designed by Yokoo to show the city submerged in water, hovered over by a diver and fish, and embedded in coral reefs. A squid is shown ascending from it, and a UFO is either ascending or descending in a spotlight over the city.[20] The original album's gatefold sleeve elaborated on the imagery in the inscription: "During various periods in history the supermen of Agharta came to the surface of Earth to teach the human race how to live together in peace and save us from wars, catastrophe, and destruction. The apparent sighting of several flying saucers soon after the bombing of Hiroshima may represent one visitation. The UFO shown here symbolizes a similar connection."[20] The foreground of the back cover's painting shows a reptilian creature that alludes to similar ideas about Lemuria, a mythological continent in Earth's prehistory inhabited by an advanced civilization that was forced under the Earth's surface after its homeland was destroyed by the Great Deluge.[20]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Retrospective reviews
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[8]
Robert ChristgauA[9]
Down Beat[17]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz[21]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[22]
Sputnikmusic4.5/5[7]

Agharta was panned by music critics when it was originally released in 1975.[23] It was the most widely panned of Davis' double albums during the 1970s.[9] In a contemporary review for The New York Times, Robert Palmer said that the album is marred by long stretches of "sloppy, one-chord jams" and disjointed sounds, and the music's banality is clearly rendered by the impeccable Japanese engineering. He that felt Davis' wah-wah pedal deprives him of his phrasing and criticized the band as poor "by rock standards", particularly Pete Cosey, whose overamplified lead guitar "whines and rumbles like a noisy machine shop" and relegates Reggie Lucas to background riffs.[24] In a positive review, Nathan Cobb of The Boston Globe said that its music is "a kind of firestorm for the '70s" with a "positively cosmic" rhythmic foundation and that Davis "remains the one who leads the others through the unknown waters of electronic jazz rock."[25]

Gary Giddins wrote an angrily dismissive review of the album for The Village Voice. A few days after it was published, he was sent a package full of large Q-tips, industrial-strength scouring pads, and a card that read: "The next time you review Miles Davis clean out your head."[26] Although he initially dismissed both the sender and Davis' direction, Giddins later wrote that Agharta became one of his favorite albums from Davis' electric period and ultimately praised the dramatic themes and relentless tension of the music: "[T]here really is not a moment when the music fails to reflect the ministrations of the sorcerer himself."[27] In his 1981 review of the album, Robert Christgau called the album "angry, dissociated, funky, and the best Davis music since Jack Johnson." He commended Al Foster for "moving from body to spirit rhythms in an effortless, guileless show of chops", Fortune for "the best reed playing on a Davis record in this decade", and praised Cosey as "simply astonishing—the noises he produces for the second half of side one comprise some of the greatest free improvisations ever heard in a 'jazz'-'rock' context."[9]

Legacy and influence

Back in the mid-1970's, fans who had formed emotional attachments to the moody soundscapes of Filles de Kilimanjaro and In a Silent Way had trouble adjusting to the electronic firestorms of Agharta. While Mr. Davis was being treated for two broken legs and a bone disease, a newer generation of listeners and musicians was inspired by the abrasive music his last band of the 70's had recorded.

— Robert Palmer, 1985[28]

Agharta was released after Davis had retired in 1975.[29] It was his last album of original material for five years.[30] Despite being one of his lesser-known albums, Agharta belonged to a musical period in Davis' career that influenced subsequent groups in the British jazz scene and Norwegian musicians such as Bugge Wesseltoft.[31] The album was reissued in the United States by Columbia Records in January 1991.[32] Both Agharta and Davis' 1972 album On the Corner were major influences on the Beastie Boys' 1994 album Ill Communication.[12] Jazz guitarist Henry Kaiser said that the best band performance of jazz's electric era was on Agharta.[33]

In a review of its reissue, Down Beat magazine's Bill Milkowski called Agharta a "landmark electric album" that inspired an entire generation of musicians to focus on cathartic playing rather than precise instrumentation and musical notes. He credited Cosey's excursive style for "spawning an entire school of 'sick' guitar playing" and claimed that the combination of Fortune's acerbic sax lines atop Foster, Henderson, and Lucas' syncopated grooves predated Steve Coleman and Greg Osby's M-Base experiements by a decade.[17] Sputnikmusic's Hernan M. Campbell felt that it "displays some incredibly dextrous musicianship all throughout, especially from Pete Cosey who practically steals the show with his deploys of Hendrix-inspired electrical distorting devices."[7] Phil Alexander of Mojo magazine likened the album's electronic aesthetic to that of Stockhausen: "Agharta is both ambient yet thrashing, melodic yet coruscating."[5] Allmusic's Thom Jurek said that it is inarguably the "greatest electric funk-rock jazz record" and "there is simply nothing like Agharta in the canon of recorded music."[8]

In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), J. D. Considine wrote that Agharta's "alternately audacious, poetic, hypnotic, and abrasive" music has endured better than Davis' other concert recordings from the 1970s.[34] Davis biographer Jack Chambers said that it is superior to most of the other music from his electric period,[6] and that its "Maiysha" and "Jack Johnson" segments "magically bring into focus the musical forces over which many thought Davis had lost control."[29] Music journalist Richard Cook cited the album as "among the highest points of Davis's career".[35] In 2009, Agharta was one of 52 albums by Davis that were remastered and released in mini-LP sleeves as a part of Sony Legacy's Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection.[36]

Track listing

All compositions by Miles Davis.[37]

2006 mini-LP edition

Disc one[39]
  1. "Prelude" – 32:31
  2. "Maiysha" – 13:10
Disc two
  1. "Interlude/Theme from Jack Johnson" – 60:55

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[39]

Musicians

Production

  • Takaaki Amano – assistant engineering
  • Shigeo Anzai – photography
  • Mitsuru Kasai – assistant engineering
  • Kiyoshia Koyama – liner notes
  • Yoshihiro Kumagai – liner notes
  • Teo Macero – producer
  • Tadayuki Naitoh – photography
  • Keiichi Nakamura – album direction
  • Tamoo Suzuki – engineering
  • Tadanori Yokoo – artwork

Charts

Chart (1976)[40] Peak
position
U.S. Billboard 200 158
U.S. Top Jazz Albums (Billboard) 16
Chart (2006) Peak
position
Japanese Albums Chart[41] 243

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Chambers 1998, p. 274.
  2. ^ a b c d Chambers 1998, p. 276.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Szwed 2004, p. 342.
  4. ^ Chambers 1998, pp. 274–5.
  5. ^ a b Alexander, Phil (December 27, 2007). "Miles Davis – Disc of the day". Mojo. London. Archived from the original on May 22, 2010. Retrieved May 22, 2010. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ a b c d e Chambers 1998, p. 275.
  7. ^ a b c Campbell, Herman M. (May 26, 2012). "Review: Miles Davis – Agharta". Sputnikmusic. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved February 24, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ a b c Jurek, Thom. "Agharta – Miles Davis". Allmusic. Rovi Corporation. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved February 24, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ a b c d Christgau 1981, p. 103.
  10. ^ Trzaskowski, Andrzej (1976). Jazz Forum: The Magazine of the International Jazz Federation: 74. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. ^ DeRogatis, Jim (July 13, 2001). "Vans Warped Tour stays true to its roots". Chicago Sun-Times. p. 5. Retrieved April 16, 2013. the jazz-rock fusion of Miles Davis circa 'Pangea' and 'Agharta'
  12. ^ a b Reynolds 2011, p. 182.
  13. ^ The Wire (161). London: 60. 1997. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  14. ^ Bayles, Martha (May 13, 2001). "Miles Davis: The Chameleon of Cool; An Innovator With Dueling Ambitions". The New York Times. p. 3. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved April 16, 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ Wilson, Calvin (December 14, 2003). "Legendary Trumpeter Was Musical Genius". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. 60. Retrieved June 26, 2013. (subscription required)
  16. ^ Szwed 2004, pp. 342–3.
  17. ^ a b c d Milkowski, Bill (1991). "Review: Agharta". Down Beat. Chicago. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  18. ^ Tingen, Paul (1998). "Bill Laswell: Re-shaping the Music of Miles Davis". Sound on Sound. Cambridge. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved June 14, 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  19. ^ a b Berressem, Bucher & Schwagmeier 2012, p. 109.
  20. ^ a b c d Berressem, Bucher & Schwagmeier 2012, p. 110.
  21. ^ Cook & Morton 1992, p. 272.
  22. ^ Considine et al. 2004, p. 215.
  23. ^ French, Alex (December 23, 2009). "We Want Miles: The Q". GQ. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
  24. ^ Palmer, Robert (April 4, 1976). "A Jazz Giant Explores Rock". The New York Times. Arts & Leisure-Recordings section, p. REC2. Retrieved June 14, 2013. (subscription required)
  25. ^ Cobb, Nathan (February 26, 1976). "Sound". The Boston Globe. p. A8. Retrieved June 14, 2013. (subscription required)
  26. ^ Giddins 2006, p. 186.
  27. ^ Giddins 2006, pp. 186–7.
  28. ^ Palmer, Robert (May 26, 1985). "Miles Davis Revives His Bad-Guy Image with a Pop Album". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved June 14, 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  29. ^ a b Chambers 1998, p. 234.
  30. ^ "Miles Davis Biography". Rolling Stone. Retrieved September 14, 2013.
  31. ^ Graham, Stephen (September 21, 2009). "Miles Electric Bassist Michael Henderson Begins Three-Night Stint At Ronnie Scott's". Jazzwise. London. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved June 26, 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  32. ^ Schwann Spectrum. 4 (4): 329. 1993. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  33. ^ Higgins, Jim (May 27, 2001). "Miles of Electricity". Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Retrieved June 26, 2013. (subscription required)
  34. ^ Considine et al. 2004, p. 219.
  35. ^ Greenlee, Steve (March 4, 2007). "Reassessing the man with the horn". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved June 26, 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  36. ^ Barton, Chris (November 28, 2009). "Miles and miles of Davis in career retrospective". Orlando Sentinel. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved June 14, 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  37. ^ Agharta (gatefold LP). CBS/Sony. 1975. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |publisherid= ignored (help)
  38. ^ Agharta (CD reissue booklet). Columbia Records. 1991. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |publisherid= ignored (help)
  39. ^ a b Agharta (DSD mini-LP liner notes). Sony Music Japan. 2006. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |publisherid= ignored (help)
  40. ^ "Agharta – Miles Davis : Awards". Allmusic. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved June 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  41. ^ "マイルス・デイビスのアルバム売り上げランキング" (in Japanese). Oricon. Archived from the original on August 11, 2013. Retrieved June 15, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
Footnote
  1. ^ "Theme from Jack Johnson" starts side three, not side four as erroneously listed.[6]

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

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