Average Customer Review:
 ( 57 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
52 of 53 found the following review helpful:
 Lurching groove beast prowls in 4 dimensionsAug 26, 2002
By Phil Avetxori
By the time Miles Davis recorded this album, many jazz purists had written him off long ago. Elecric Miles was seen as commercially compromised, a crass cash-in on the popularity of rock and funk. Give me a break. This multi-headed funk hydra was just as bewildering to the kids as it was to jazzbo snobs. This was undoubtedly Miles' tightest group of the 70's, and would continue in slightly modified form until Hyde Selim Sivad began a painful 6 year exorcism from which the Jeckyl Miles Davis would re-emerge: healthier, happier, but far less interesting. The "Dark" in "Dark Magus" doesn't only refer to the highlighted Africanisms that the intense focus on writhing, mutating rhythms had honed in on by this point; this is torment, passion, testosterone, and sweat. In short, this music has muscle. This group is amazing it's ability to maintain focus, drive, and coherence while structure shifts on a dime and at every turn. Hendrix-meets-Sharrock avant bluesrock guitar squall snakes through the quaking, swinging, stretching, spiraling rhythms laid down by the Henderson-Mtume-Foster groove factory, while the horn lines of Miles and Liebman skate the surface, divebomb, bounce, and wail. The whole thing is tied together, in a macrostructural sense, by Miles' planes and throbbing waves of organ, to say nothing of his near-telepathic bandleading. Electronic bleeps, splats, and an occasional, textural use of hyperfast drum machines fill in the infrequent spaces in this endless mutational moment. It all sounds so natural and instictive; anything but the chops-fetishist wankeroo that gave fusion a bad name. Less than a year later it would all be over. Almost 30 years later, music still hasn't caught up with some of the most avant-garde, yet some of the funkiest, work of one of the 20th century's great artists.
67 of 74 found the following review helpful:
Dark Demonic FunkMar 19, 2000
By Frank Bock
This album by the Prince of Darkness is most likely, the thickest, darkest piece of music that I own. It sounds more like Miles recorded it in Hell than Carnagie Hall, as everything is dark and dense and almost possessing an evil quality. And the band rocks pretty hard. The concert opens in typical Miles fashion, like a mf with a song called Moja. It almost reminds me of the days when he started a show with something furious like Ah-Leu-Cha, which is on that great Miles and Coltrane live album. But if Ah-Leu-Cha takes a nod to Bird, then Moja takes it's nod to the devil himself. Al Foster's drums probably knocked everyone out of their seats while Miles pitted his almost screaming, electrified trumpet against an impenetrable wall of three (!) guitars. The song is wild, and rocks harder (and longer with such sustained momentum) than the heaviest rock song of the day. The dark funk starts with the second song, Wili. This slow, black, 25 minute track (split into two parts) shows off some menacing interaction between Michael Henderson's bass, Foster's drums, and Miles's cryptic keyboard and finally trumpet playing. The song paints images of a giant Miles, walking slowly through Carnagie Hall, in his flowing red bellbottoms and custom made fringed canary yellow jacket picking off concert goers one by one with his short, caustic trumpet blasts. His tone might not have been fantastic, but this is a new Miles... more crazy than his earlier days, with his trumpet lines taking the shape of almost painful little shards. All the while, the three guitar attack of Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas and Dominique Gaumont slash away with their electric axes. Disc two begins with the sounds of Michael Hendersons HUGE, funky basslines. The dark atmosphere has not and will not leave this show. Tatu is funkier than the last, and has some more of Miles's weird keyboard playing. Just a sustained note here or there gives enough direction and mood for the band to follow as the guitars all blare away. This song goes on for a while, kind of meanders aimlessly as the band seems to search for inspiration and direction, eventually moving into some more hardcore thumping. That leads into Nne part 1 (Ife) which also is a little slow but that leads into Nne part 2 which is out of this world. The band just lets everything loose, and it's not even clear if Miles is still on the stage! Overall, Dark Magus is good. Maybe not 5 stars, but certainly better than 4 in my book. It doesn't deserve to get panned like it so often does. A lot of purists don't like it... don't like much of Miles past In A Silent Way... or even don't like much of Miles past Jack Johnson. But like On The Corner, I think it's just a great listen. If you're a first time Miles enthusiasticee, maybe Dark Magus is not the place to start. But I love (along with Agarta and Pangea) the direction Miles was taking during this time period, and these listens are therefore essential. It's still Miles, baby. Listen to this album and then imagine what Carnagie Hall must have felt like!
26 of 29 found the following review helpful:
A mind-blowing jazz-funk "Sacre du Printemps"May 21, 2006
By Eric Krupin
If the story about Miles Davis hating his trumpet playing on this record so much that he wanted to have it edited out is true - and Lord knows Miles's story is hip-deep in apocrypha by now - it would only be a manifestation of the kind of perfectionism one might expect in an artist of his stature. [And for those of you joining us late, the stature is that of a Picasso or Joyce.]
Put another way, the searing razor-sharp ferocity of Davis's trumpet on this recording is the single most powerful musical sound of any kind that I have ever heard. Loud and bristling as hell, sure - but also desperately articulate. Slayer can crush your skull open like a sledgehammer to the forehead. But Miles's expert cutting - like Hannibal Lecter's - can surgically remove the top of your head while still keeping you alive and then saute your brains in white wine before making you eat them.
Remember the combination of urban cool, impassioned intellect, and bad-ass groove that made Miles a bop immortal [and icon of Black Pride] in the Prestige recordings of the mid-Fifties? Now imagine that man facing painfully disabling medical problems, growing ever more (justifiably) bitter at the indignities inflicted on him by a racist society [i.e. being told by a white politician "your Mammy must be very proud of you"], and descending ever further into the hollow darkness of drug addiction and the self-inflicted loneliness created by his long-harbored misogyny. Now picture that man plugging his instrument into a 15 foot high stack of humming Marshall amplifiers powered by the entire electrical grid of ghetto Detroit during the Vietnam/Watergate toilet-flush - as the most fiercely gifted young cats on the scene prepare themselves to prove that the Great Man's faith in their talent was not misplaced.
Cue music. The result is - as Robert Christgau described this record's sibling LP "Agharta" - "a well-aimed attempt to kick the world in the balls".
Though robed in sleazy electric funk, the eruptive catharsis of this music makes it kin to a classical masterpiece like Mahler's Ninth Symphony or Stravinsky's "Sacre du Printemps". Where Gustav and Igor arranged instruments, Miles arranged *players* of instruments - and with as much inventiveness and artistry. [Indeed, I would argue that his achievement in the unquantifiable field of band-assembling rivals his accomplishment as an instrumentalist.] But while they were able to exercise their musical genius in an atmosphere of isolated reflection, Miles exercised his while nimbly balancing on the treadmill tightrope of fast-paced improvisation before a live audience. [Who in this case were either the rich ofays who condescended to him or the snotty jazzbos who sulked over their inability to confine him to the cage of his previous masterpieces. No, it was not a loving vibe in Carnegie Hall on March 30, 1974.]
Needless to say, this music will not serve as a pleasurable ambience for classing up your next dinner party. It is a bitterly defiant expression of nihilism from the most proteanly brilliant musical mind of the 20th century.
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 Miles of ElectricitySep 20, 2001
By Tom
Miles' "electric" period seems to have polarized audiences like no music since Dylan plugged HIMSELF in. However I, in common with a lot of modern younger listeners I would imagine, have some problems understanding how this music could have provoked such violent antagonism - what once sounded "brutal", "repetitive" and "unmusical" now sounds daring, vital and remarkably contemporary. On this live recording, Miles is joined by soprano and tenor sax, electric bass, drums, percussion, no less than three (count `em) electric guitarists and no keyboards at all (except for Miles' own elliptical outbursts on electric organ). Hardly a typical jazz group line-up but then Miles had hardly been playing anything that could be described as "jazz" for some years when this album was recorded. In fact, Miles had long since stopped being influenced by what was happening in the jazz world - his greatest influences during this period being Hendrix, Sly Stone and (more tangentially) Stockhausen. With such influences, is it any wonder that the group most evoked by listening to "Dark Magus" is not a jazz group at all but a German avant-garde rock group, Can (with a healthy dose of George Clinton's Funkadelic thrown in too). As has been pointed out several times, this album is very well named - the album does indeed have a dark, mystic air about it - Miles does indeed run the voodoo down on this album! In spite of that, it is actually less dense and oppressive than its reputation would lead you to believe. For some time now, Miles' bands had been using wah-wah pedals on anything that moves, and though there is a lot of it on this album it is not as a oppressive as on say "On the Corner", where one gets the feeling that if Miles could have wah-wahed the drums he would have. Miles plays fascinating trumpet throughout, sclerotic and alien - sounding like no trumpet you've ever heard before or since, in fact, Miles is easily the most innovative and peculiar instrumentalist on the album! The rhythm section keep up a rolling Afro-funk groove while the guitarists whip up a dense fug of "Riot Goin' On" era Sly wah-wahed funk before taking off on scrabbling solos, which are closer to Michael Karoli of Can than either Hendrix or John McLaughlin. The more jazz elements are provided by sax players Dave Liebman and Azar Lawrence, who play beautifully throughout. I would recommend this album wholeheartedly to fans of Electric Miles, my only quibble being that the sound quality isn't as good as on other Miles' live albums of the 70's - hence the four stars.
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Brutal funky music - is it still jazz?Nov 22, 2004
By M. C Cardoso
"marciohaas"
Wow, in many ways this album is the ultimate funky jam of Miles Davis in the seventies. The sound in this album is visceral, brutal, with heavy guitars a la Hendrix, monster voodoo funk grooves and very little mellowness (though there are a few spacey parts on the jams). Can this music be described as jazz? or rock? or funk? Dark magus defies labeling but it is a hell of a ride!
Compared to other '70s live albums from Davis, I would say Dark Magus is much less avant-gard jazz and much more funk power. There are no keyboard players such as Chick Chorea to forge a harmonic maze (Miles himself does play a few weird chords and effects now and them, but sparely). Instead, we have 3 guitars and a percussion-heavy rhytmic session that create a dense tropical jungle of polyrhytmic grooves. I also love the saxophone on this album: some of the best solos ever. In fact, the sax is the instrument that brings the jazziest moments of a concert that is otherwise dominated by funk and the maverick playing of Davis.
The trumpet has to be heard to be believed. Miles plugged his horn on a wah-wah pedal and the result is unique. From what I read, Mr. Davis was enduring chronical physical pain and frustation during the Dark Magus period, and it shows: Miles' soloing has always been plaintive, but I never heard so much raw energy, anger, sorrow and funkiness in his playing before. It is a cry of sheer desperation and passion. What's more, sometimes Miles came with some phrases that are so funky... it is as if a spirit of a voodoo priest was inspiring the musician and bringing out primeval African music. Perhaps the best example is the short phrasing preceding the first (extraordinary) sax solo on the 2nd track.
This is obviously not an album for people looking for Kind of Blue fare, but if you've reached this far probably you are seeking some serious funk-jazz-Hendrix-freak out music. And as far as uncompromising heavy-funk jams led by a tortured genius go, it is hard to find a live album better than Dark Magus.
See all 57 customer reviews on Amazon.com
|
based on 57 reviews
