Track Listing

1. Frelon Brun
2. Tout De Suite
3. Petits Machins (Little Stuff)
4. Filles De Kilimanjaro
5. Mademoiselle Mabry
6. Tout De Suite

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24430 in Music
• Released on: 2002-08-19
• Number of discs: 1

CD Description
FILLES DE KILIMANJARO is one of the most singular, compelling works in the entire Miles Davis discography. It marks thecontinental divide between the trumpeter's classic '60s quintet, and the furious period of experimentation which led toBITCHES BREW, ON THE CORNER and AGARTHA.
By 1968, Miles was feeling creatively restless, and stalwarts Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter were preparing to leave (to be replaced by Chick Corea and Dave Holland). So FILLES DE KILIMANJARO is atransitional work, suffused in the heady abstraction of the'60s, but with an ear out for the blues tonalities, electronic textures, and dancing rhythms of the jazz-rock epoch to come. Nevertheless, FILLES is neither avant-garde jazz nor fusion; it occupies a space of its own aural design--a magnificent new direction in music.
Miles' fascination with theFender/Rhodes electric piano, and its potential for new chordal voicings, is at the heart of FILLES DE KILIMANJARO. Herbie Hancock treats it percussively on the relentlessly driving "Frelon Brun", and with bell-like elan on the winsome title tune. Corea, meanwhile, feeds the horns guitar-like strums on the edgy, martial "Petits Machins", and bluesy washes of sound on the eerie "Mademoiselle Mabry". Bassists Carter and Holland find new harmonic possibilities within their vamp-like structures, freeing Tony Williams to engage Davis and Shorter in some remarkable airborne conversations: From the "All Blues"/James Brown references on "Toot De Suite" to thefree-form mystery of "Mademoiselle Mabry" where all the strong rhythmic beats are air-brushed away, the trumpet and tenor saxophone are allowed to create sophisticated new forms of phrasing.

Customer Reviews

Jazz abstraction and blues diffraction
Its 1968 and its a heady brew of highly original, dark, intense, ethereal jazz from Davis.
Personnel: Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock or Chic Corea, Ron Carter or Dave Holland and Tony Williams.
Williams has ants in his pants throughout. What energy. He is phenomenal.
Its a very unique sound even for this band.
Hancock or Corea play both piano and electric piano.
The horn players come out with some weird haunting melodies.
You can certainly hear the influences of rock creeping in. (James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Cream)
As the sleeve notes put it: "bestrides the fault line between jazz abstraction and blues diffraction" Could not have put it better myself, whatever it means.
The closing 16 minutes of the final track Mademoiselle Mabry is the highpoint of a staggering piece of work.
Recommended.

Miles Magic
The album "Filles de Kilimanjaro" has been heralded by critics as marking the point at which rock began to influence the trumpeter's work. Forty years later, the influence of rock is barely discernable as contemporary musicians have very much absorbed these ideas to such an extent that they have become part of the jazz mainstream. Indeed, Dave Douglas' recent "The Infinite" is very much a homage to this earlier album as it too features the electric piano in an otherwise acoustic setting. (The exceptance being the judicial use of electric base.)
Curiously, this album therefore sounds more contemporary than much of Miles' subsequent output and, for this reviewer, marks a creative highpoint.It is a fitting, adventurous swan song for his classic Quintet of the 1960's.
Throughout Miles' tailors his style to fit the new grooves that the band were now playing. Primarily noted as a cool player, it is doubtful as to whether his groups played any hotter than on "Felon Brun" and "Petits Machins", the two of the most exciting tracks in the Davis discography. His playing is also particularly delicate on "Mademoiselle Mabry." Shorter continues his harmonic explorations and throughout the tracks Tony Williams, the star of the show, whips up a maestrom behind his kit. Elsewhere, the excitement is generated by the electric piano playing of either Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea who prompt the soloists with jabs of exotic colour or scurrying runs up and down the keyboard. Even on the slower tracks, you can feel the energy bubbling away. Bass duties are shared between Ron Carter and a young Dave Holland.
Miles Davis sub-titled this album "Directions in music" and he clearly sensed that he was onto something new when he recorded it. There is plenty of opportunity for extended solo's, although many of the moody passages have clearly been expertly arranged. The harmonies played by the band are as startling as those conjured up ten years earlier on the Davis albums with Gil Evans, who I believe also had a hand with this effort.
"Filles de Kilimanjaro" is an album that deserves to be better known and if your knowledge of the great man is limited to "Kind of Blue", you will do your ears a treat by investigating in this neglected gem.

Building to that peak period.
Davis is of more interest to me from the mid to late 1960's up until his retirement in the mid 1970s. These are the 'directions in music' that lead both to and away from the classic Bitches Brew album.

Fille de Kilimanjaro is an example of this development, Davis accompanied by regular players Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter. Recorded in June and September of 1968, Davis moves from the 'Miles Smiles' period of transition to another period of his music which would be as much influenced by Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone as Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong...This is an album that feels like one long piece, in five phases- and is best listened to next to Nefertiti and Sorcerer- prior to In a Silent Way (also reissued with this) and Bitches Brew. The story didn't end with BB- as Davis developed a more funk orientated take on this type of jazz with the excellent Jack Johnson and On the Corner albums (the coda to this era is Get Up With It- particularly the timeless He Loved Him Madly). Fille de Kilimanjaro is initially hardwork, but repeated listens will reveal its qualities. This edition comes with superior notes to the prior version and an alternate take of Tout de Suite (which is as nice to have as the other bonus cuts on recent reissues). Not sure about the change from red to grey on the cover, but this is another Davis album you have to own.