Miles Davis - E.S.P. (1981 Japanese CBS/Sony Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: EX
Obi: None

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Miles Davis - E.S.P. | Vinyl LP - 1981 Japanese CBS/Sony Reissue (18AP 2066, Miles 25 Series)

Shorter had joined the band four months before these sessions. He replaced George Coleman, a strong and conventional tenor saxophonist, and the change transformed the group. Coleman played the changes. Shorter played around them, through them, sometimes against them, and the rest of the band adjusted accordingly. The title track (co-written by Davis and Shorter) opens the album with a theme so rhythmically fragmented it barely holds together as a melody, the five musicians slipping in and out of unison in a way that sounds both rehearsed and spontaneous. "Eighty-One" (Davis and Carter) settles into a groove, but even here Williams's drumming keeps shifting accents and textures underneath. Hancock's "Little One" is a ballad with a harmonic sophistication that gives Davis and Shorter space to play melodically without falling into conventional ballad phrasing. Carter contributes three pieces: "R.J." is the shortest and most direct, "Mood" closes the album with nearly nine minutes of open, searching interplay, and his co-written "Eighty-One" provides the album's most grounded rhythmic foundation.

Side B opens with "Agitation," Davis's most aggressive composition here, Williams pushing the tempo and density until the music threatens to come apart before pulling back. "Iris" is Shorter's other composition and one of the most beautiful pieces in the quintet's catalogue, the melody unfolding slowly with Hancock's chords creating an ambiguity between consonance and dissonance that defines the album's harmonic language. Williams was 19 when these sessions were recorded. His drumming already sounded like nobody else's: polyrhythmic, reactive, capable of shifting the entire feel of a piece within a single bar.

This is the 1981 Japanese reissue on CBS/Sony 18AP 2066, number 16 in the Miles 25 series, manufactured by CBS/Sony Inc.