Product Description

With IN A SILENT WAY, the elements of popular music, blues and electronics that had been implicit in Miles Davis' previous recordings now came centre stage, and the trumpeter never looked back again. IN A SILENT WAY is Miles' BIRTH OF THE COOL/MILES AHEAD/KIND OF BLUE for the rock generation.
Gone are the rhythmic and harmonic trappings of bebop. In their place, Miles conjures a hypnotic, subliminal dance pulse and an airy, celestial drone of electric keyboards. Miles fell in love with the bell tones and flute-like textures of Fender/Rhodes electric pianos, and in the hands of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul (who doubles on organ), theycreate layer upon layer of choral texture, in great reverberant washes of colour and counterpoint.
The juxtapositionof groove and impressionistic drone movements creates the inner tension in each of the extended pieces--Miles' "Shhh/Peaceful" and Zawinul's "In A Silent Way/It's About Time". Newcomer John McLaughlin's lyric, sitar-like guitar sets a serene mood on "Shhh", as bassist Dave Holland and drummer Williams essay a pulsating vamp. Miles' open horn is nuanced and graceful, combining long notes and cracked speech-like tonesinto one of his classic melodic statements, followed by McLaughlin's dancing figures and Wayne Shorter's chanting soprano. The title tune is a dark, dreamy, aquatic tone poem thatbreaks into an irresistable blues vamp. IN A SILENT WAY is one of Miles most sublimely beautiful, enduring creations.

Track Listing

1. Shhh/Peaceful
2. In A Silent Way/It's About That Time

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9961 in Music
• Released on: 2002-08-19
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered

Amazon.co.uk Review
Miles Davis's famous mid-1960s quintet, featuring saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock, was intact until just a few weeks before his new, electric ensemble recorded In a Silent Way. Legendary as a kind of line in the sand challenging jazz fans during the ascendance of electric, psychedelic rock, In a Silent Way hinted at the repetitive polyrhythms Davis would employ throughout the early 1970s. It also partook generously of electric piano and bass and rekindled the tonal palette that Davis had explored famously with Kind of Blue. But In a Silent Way remains a clearly electric jazz record, part ambient colour exploration, part rock-inflected energy and vibe, and part outright maverick creativity. Davis takes many long, breathy solos, and they glisten in a burnished blue against his new group's strange admixture of musical moods. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

miles davis is great music
i love miles davis and this is one of his best! this miles davis cd is a beautiful jazz cd and it has some terrific songs like shhh/peaceful. miles davis is one of my favorite artists in the world, get this cd for your great music collection. i also recommend kind of blue too.

Beyond Excellent
Absolutely fabulous pieces of music. Nearly forty and I can't believe I've been listening to it for 30+ years! This, and Hot Rats by Frank Zappa, helped me thro some crap summers in Cumbria playing board games with an elder brother. Like others I have recently purchased yet another copy after gifting it to friends. Still have my taped version on a soundhog cassette tho! Don't worry if your CD collection isn't as big as 'Owen's' below, and I'm not dull, a muso or pretentious - tho he may be.

DO treat yourself to this fine CD of musicianship. Listen to the samples and curse yourself for not already owning it. Enjoy! Porl.

Pushes the boundaries of jazz into ambient territory.
I'm no expert when it comes to jazz, often finding that a lot of jazz music tends to fade into the background as you listen to it. Fine, I suppose, for coffee bars or dinner parties, when the focus tends to fall more on conversation, though perhaps not so riveting for solitary afternoon listens or late night exploration. Often, I've found jazz to be more rewarding when coupled with a more experimental rock sound, keeping the notion of long atmospheric improvisations intact, but advancing further with ideas of rhythm, melody and momentum.

One of my favourite albums is the self-titled debut of former Talk Talk member Mark Hollis, which takes elements of a jazz template and merges it with elements of rock and folk. It is through Hollis and his work with Talk Talk that I discovered the music of Miles Davis, with many people citing the influence of albums like Miles Smiles, Kind of Blue and In A Silent Way on those two Talk Talk classics, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock. If you're familiar with those albums, particularly the more subdued Laughing Stock, then you'll have a vague idea of what to expect from this album... with the influence of In A Silent Way also finding it's way onto albums as disparate as Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, Dead Bees on a Cake by David Sylvian, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Eno's Music for Films and Kid A/Amnesiac by Radiohead.

The music here is broken down into two tracks (although there are really four parts in total, or five if you count the reprise of the title track at the end) with the album opening with the epic improvisation piece, Shhh/Peaceful. The band that Davis had assembled for this album is immense, and, on the whole, would go on to help create the more dense and frightening sounds of his follow up album, the near legendary Bitches Brew. In A Silent Way is much more lethargic and (I suppose) more ambient (though that's a rather broad assessment!!) work compared to its follow up, though a few of the more tense instrumental arrangements do point towards tracks like Pharaoh's Dance and Spanish Key. However, on the whole, the album seems more like the natural progression from Kind of Blue into the kind of music that Miles would create for the latter half of his career.

The music covers a number of tempos, moving seamlessly from the lulled beauty of the title-track into It's About That Time, which is a little more robust. Miles was using three electric organs on this album, performed by luminaries like Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, so the album has a sweeping, seamless sound that flows perfectly. Other musicians involved include Joe Zawinul on the third electric organ, John McLaughlin on guitar, Dave Holland on up-right bass, and Tony Williams on drums. The band is further complemented by Wayne Shorter's shimmering soprano saxophone, which adds the perfect balance to Davis's own astounding trumpet work (which is here, unrivalled).

The playing - right from the opening, hypnotic-slush of organs at the beginning of Shhh, right the way through to the interweaving trance-like horn-arrangements of In A Silent Way (which is the track that most pushes the similarities with something like Slim Slow Slider from Astral Weeks or the closing moments of Dick Parry's work on Shine On You Crazy Diamond) - is perfect, and creates a great atmosphere that never becomes stale. Miles and his producer Teo Macero arrange the album so that, even at it's most ambient, there's always something to hold our attention. Much of the music builds on Zawinul's organ, with a great dependency on the rhythm section of Holland and Williams. On top of this we get some great piano fills from Corea and Hancock, particularly on Peaceful, and some excellent and highly influential lead guitar work from McLaughlin (standouts abound throughout the second half of the album).

The music here manages to create a great atmosphere without substituting rhythm (take a listen to Miles' standout moment on It's About That Time to see what I mean)... whilst the use of instrumentation and the great approach to production (Davis and Macero using the idea of space and - unsurprisingly given the title implications - the use of silence and breaks to draw more attention to the notes being played!) is still as impressive as it would have been thirty-five years ago. It probably won't sound as revolutionary as it once did, what with other acts taking an influence from it, etc, though the music here is still expansive, rhythmic, intelligent and enjoyable... which is why In A Silent Way is one of those "jazz" albums that can probably be appreciated by people who don't necessarily understand or appreciate the genre.