It’s a little known fact that ‘Dark Magus’, Miles Davis’ 1977 live album recording a 1974 concert in New York, made it into Q Magazine’s 2001 list of the heaviest albums of all time. It’s a ferocious funk metal attack, with Miles soloing dementedly over the top, that more than holds its own against heaviosity from luminaries including The MC5, Swans, Black Sabbath and Metallica. And it’s only one of the highlights of his extraordinary ‘Electric Miles’ phase in the 70s, where – as Julian Cope put it – he worked his way to an ‘epitome of music shamanism’ by creating a series of astonishing double albums that rock harder than a flotilla of out of control battleships crewed by demented Zen masters on speed.
They’re also a great way of flushing out last night’s cobblers; but alas, I can’t put them up here. Rather – go explore! Here’s Cope’s full article on Electric Miles. And then, go buy! Dark Magus, Get Up With It, Agartha, Pangaea, Live Evil, On the Corner – all deep, dark, heavy and magnificent. What I can post is this, from YouTube – a rather murkily mixed 16 minutes or so of the Dark Magus band at its peak. Enjoy!
It was a heavy scene and it was highly fantastic.
And then some chicks came in.
Chick Corea?