Miles Davis - Nefertiti (1981 Japanese CBS/Sony Vinyl LP)

Miles Davis - Nefertiti | Vinyl LP - 1981 Japanese CBS/Sony Reissue (18AP 2071, Miles 25 Series no. 21)

• The Second Great Quintet's fourth album and Miles Davis's last fully acoustic record, with every composition written by his sidemen: three by Wayne Shorter, two by Herbie Hancock, one by Tony Williams
• Japanese "Miles 25" series pressing on CBS/Sony, celebrating Davis's quarter-century on Columbia, manufactured in Tokyo.
• Home to the radical title track, in which the horns repeat the melody without soloing while the rhythm section improvises beneath them, reversing the entire logic of a jazz performance

There is a case to be made that Nefertiti is the most fully realised album this quintet recorded. By the summer of 1967, Davis, Shorter, Hancock, Carter and Williams had been playing together for nearly three years, and the understanding between them had reached a point where the normal mechanics of a jazz performance could be quietly discarded. The title track is the most famous example. Shorter's melody is stated by the two horns in unison and then repeated, again and again, while Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock improvise freely underneath. The effect is hypnotic and disorienting in equal measure. Nothing about it sounds like a gimmick. The melody shifts slightly with each repetition, the dynamics rise and fall, and by the time the piece ends the rhythm section has done something extraordinary without any of the usual signposting. "Fall", another Shorter composition, follows with one of Davis's most lyrical trumpet solos on any of the quintet's records, the phrasing spare and perfectly placed over Hancock's voicings. "Hand Jive", Williams's contribution, closes Side A with the most rhythmically intense piece on the album, the drums driving the ensemble toward something that borders on free jazz.

Side B opens with "Madness", one of two Hancock compositions. The quintet had originally rehearsed it as a slow waltz before transforming it into a fast 4/4 reading on the second take, and the released version moves with an urgency that the original concept wouldn't have allowed. "Riot", Hancock's other piece, is the album's shortest track at three minutes, compact and agitated. "Pinocchio", Shorter's third composition, closes the record and became one of the most played pieces from the quintet's repertoire, its angular melody and shifting harmonies a concise summary of what this band could do. Davis himself wrote none of the six pieces here, and the album is all the stronger for it, Shorter and Hancock supplying material that the quintet could reshape in real time. Engineered by Fred Plaut and Ray Moore across four sessions in June and July 1967 at Columbia's studio in New York.

This is the 1981 Japanese reissue on CBS/Sony (18AP 2071), number 21 in the Miles 25 series, manufactured in Tokyo.