Modern acts carrying the flame from early 70s Miles Davis?

Hey everyone, I've just discovered Nils Petter Molvaer and am thoroughly impressed... sounds more like In a Silent Way or Agartha than anything else I've heard, feels so fresh to these ears. But when I look for "associated acts" in Last FM or Spotify it's modern Norwegian classical composers... might be worth a sojourn one day, but not what I'm looking for. Any recs from people more immersed in contemporary jazz than this neophyte? I'd ask elsewhere but am afraid they'll recommend jazz lounge tripe.

fontanelle

Check out two albums by Tim Hagans - Animation/Imagination and Re-Animation Live! They're from 1999/2000, but still sound great. I also recommend looking into Burnt Sugar - they're not a jazz group exactly, they kind of blend the whole spectrum of black music from Hendrix on, but there's plenty of electric Miles in their sound. Best album to start with IMO is Black Sex Y'all Liberation & Bloody Random Violets. You could also try Christian Scott - his album Christian aTunde Adjuah is an interesting blend of jazz, rock and electronics.

And yeah, the most recent Fontanelle disc is very good.

bohren und der club of gore - kind of.

Drive By by The Necks reminds me of In A Silent Way sometimes, there is deffo a big electric Miles influence in all their stuff really.

There's this neo-jazz band called Girls In Airports whose album Kaikoura I've been enjoying. Not sure how Davis-ish they are, but worth a listen.

Drive By by The Necks reminds me of In A Silent Way sometimes, there is deffo a big electric Miles influence in all their stuff really.

otm.

Arve Henriksen - Places of Worship is two years old and good

http://www.runegrammofon.com/artists/arve_henriksen/rcd-2147-arve-henriksen-places-of-worship-cd/

Maybe Jakob Buchanan's recent record Some People and Some Places could be interesting?

http://buchanan.dk/web/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/05-A.D.Buchanans-Armchair-Gospel.mp3

Dog Latin, how'd you come across Girls in Airports? I like Kaikoura a lot too, and since they're Danish I was able to see them live not long ago - cool band.

Hey, I went to highschool with one of the guys from Girls in Airports! Yeah, recommend them as well.

my friend saw them playing live at some sort of function or do of some sort. i wasn't that taken the first time i heard them, but he put them on again in his car once and i was hooked. the track 'Grass By The Roses' I think.

*i like it

Not recent *AT ALL* but was listening to the first couple of Gateway records the other day and they have some great electric period Miles-ish stuff on them as you might expect from a group with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette in it. Anyone know if any of John Abercrombie's later records are in the same sort of fiery style?

Jon Hassell!

Many thanks for the suggestions everyone, keep 'em coming. T far I've listened to Fontanelle & Girls in Airports... will share my thoughts once I've spun everything here a couple times.

*Thus, not T (not trying to spearhead a new lazcronym)

re: abercrombie - all the gateway cds are worth picking up, but he gets too "tasteful" later in his career for many.
however you do need "Timeless" (1975) w/ dejohnette & jan hammer which is untouchable. "characters" & the two duo records w/ ralph towner are like proto-gastr del sol & worth a punt if you see em at a fair price.
abercrombie used to be in a more rough & ready fusion gang called "friends" (or is that the title of the album - can't remember), which has a nice fuzzy itchy "feel" but i haven't found particularly memorable. bob mintzer's "Hymn" feat abercrombie is a super cheesefest. mintzer plays sax like eric leeds and aber gets his gsynth on..
recent miles analogues i've enjoyed:
close erase:"dance this" & "sports"
supersilent: first 6 or so CDs , then they start doing things like "supersilent does ambient / supersilent does morton feldman" etc which ain't so successful)
arve henrkisen/ giovanni di domenico , tatsuhisa yamamoto: both CDs: awesome.
all of arve henriksen's solo stuff.
scorch trio: guitar, double bass, drums no trumpet
the psychic paramount do the "live evil" thing but again they're a guitar band w/o trumpet.
the moritz von oswald trio do that tense atmospheric gauzy drift.
vladislav delay's "whsitleblower", "tummaa", "multila" work is that way too, whereas most of his others don't really, "kuopio" is too robotoc, "vantaa" is somehow not up to his usual standard.
other than that, vintage wise: get a listen to "love cry want" by nicholas & gallivan with larry young.
and astro can caravan were a finnish band who split the difference between sun ra & can.
be sure to let you know if owt else comes to mind.

oh and mat maneri's "sustain"

Maneri's Pentagon is also good in a loud electric kind of way. Not sure if it's still in print or not.

INteresting, Nils Petter Molvaer has just been recording and touring with Sly and Robbie the famous reggae rhythm section. I haven't heard the collaboration yet but will now try to remedy that faster.

Really not sure about other bands that sound that much like Miles at the moment. There was a lot of In A Silent Way in that Oceanic Rock thing of the late 80s though, A.R.Kane, Bark Psychosis, Saqqara Dogs etc etc

Dave Douglas has some records that channel the late 60s Davis group. The Infinite is the one I have that definitely has that In A Silent Way vibe.

Not active anymore, but Thrill Jockey project Isotope 217.

Yah so it's from 1974 but if you haven't heard Love Love by Julian Priester please listen to it. It's very beautiful.

There's a load of projects by sidemen from the time that are really good.
Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi is really really great. & Headhunters are always worth a check.
Larry Young seems to be consistently good too Love Cry Want is still pretty unsung and is very spacey. Lawrence oif Newwark is pretty otherworldly and Lifetime which was him, Tony Williams and John Mclaughlin are worth a check. I think they may have been better as a 3 piece than a 4 piece too, more space to play around each other.
Sonny Sharrock did some really noisy stuff in the late 60s then did Paradise in the mid 70s with his wife Linda which is pretty exotic funk with noisy patches.

Mtume had his first couple of disco era lps reissued as a 2fer cd. I wish they reissue the '74 solo lp.

Can't think of others from that era offhand but they will probably come back to me later.
Oh yeah pete Cosey was in a version of Power Tools after Bill Frisell left, the lp with frisell is pretty interesting too.

THere area number of things taht can be somewhat realted to Bitches Brew, things like early 70s Grateful Dead, Henry Cow's longer impros though they sound like an orchestra playing bones or toothpicks or something. Can, Quite a bit of the post psych impro rock from the early 70s takes its cues from Miles improvisation too.

Eddie Henderson and Miroslav Vitous are a couple of other sidemen that made some good fusion albums too with former band mates.

Soft Machine and Focus both came out of 'prog' with some music influenced by Miles Davis too.

Nucleus fit in with the Soft Machine to the extent they became them. Most of SM were Nucleus alumni at one point.

Or to put that a different way at one point, around the time Ratledge left the band were largely ex Nucleus.

Wadada Leo Smith...in particular, check out *Heart's Reflection* (2011) by Wadada Leo Smith's Organic. And Smith and Henry Kaiser have their Yo Miles! group that revisits electric Miles numbers.

Dave Liebman (who played on *On the Corner*, *Dark Magus* and *Get Up With It*) is also carrying the torch. I just saw him play a tribute to *On the Corner* a few months ago.

The Flaming Lips' *Embryonic* also has a strong electric Miles vibe, although more in the rock realm.

Dave Douglas has some records that channel the late 60s Davis group. The Infinite is the one I have that definitely has that In A Silent Way vibe.

Freak In made me think a bit of 60s and 70s Miles too.

Definitely bookmarking this thread. Burnt Sugar is sounding good so far.

that yoshimi/yamamoto/courtis disc gives off a miles aroma

I'll second/third many of these, incl anything w Larry Young; he's also on John McLaughlin's Devotion, with plenty of solar flares, flotation etc (Bigfoot Buddy Miles keeps the rawness more evident; by McLaughlin standards, it's postively raunchy, but still plenty cosmic, a Milesian combination I usually don't get in music compared to his). Also, LY is on Mclaughlin & Santana's Love Devotion Surrender, as Khalid Yasin (and some McL & S show tapes posted here and there from time to time). He appears on at least one posthumous Hendrix collection, Nine To The Universe (not bad).
To the Sonny Sharrock albums already mentioned, I'll add his last two, Highlife and especially Ask The Ages, with Pharoah Sanders, Charnett Moffet, and Elvin Jones (also check the Sanders albums Sharrock shows up on, Tauhid and Izipho Zam).
Dunno if they're still together from time to time (these guys were all in a buncb of other concurrent bands and projects), but I used to like The Drift quite a bit. They found time to make a couple of good albums, at least.
David Murray and James Blood Ulmer have decades of discography, and shows on YouTube; also check James Carter's most electric album (far as I've heard), Layin' In The Cut.

Oh yeah, Vernon Reid & Masque! Haven't listened in a while, and seems like these were maybe a tad uneven compared to the ones I just mentioned, but certainly worth checking out: Other True Self and Known Unknown.

The Flaming Lips' *Embryonic* also has a strong electric Miles vibe, although more in the rock realm.

― ernestp, Sunday, July 19, 2015 2:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea was gonna mention embryonic, definitely an electric miles vibe

Mushroom

url=http://baastii.bandcamp.com/releasesBaastion/url

Maybe a bit too much of a knockoff, and the players aren't as great as the originals, but in case Sony aren't issuing outtakes fast enough.

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/rootstrata/free_fusion___the_a_list

I spent many years mining this vein of music and eventually drafted the RYM list a few years ago. I wouldn't call it definitive but would still venture to say that it highlights the stronger albums.

That's an interesting list - thanks for sharing

Still listening through, thanks everyone! Doug that list will prove expendable to me. Bookmarked. Much gratitude.

hermeto pascoal's "slaves mass" (partic the CD versh w/ extra tracks) is cut from a reasonably similar cloth. also was spinning henry threadgill's "everybodys mouth's a book"(sic), and while it's got an itchy nervous ache throughout, and in places sounds like "free stump", it could be worth your while checking out

indispensable

cup runneth over itt

again, completely ignoring the contemporary aspect of the thread Q, but stomu yamash'ta's "floating music" & matching mole's "smoke signals" should do you

It is already mentioned a few times but co-signing Larry Young's wonderful Lawrence Of Newark, sick album is that.

although that isn't "modern" either but who cares?

Nicholas Payton's 'Sonic Trance' album was his electric Miles homage, been forever since I've heard it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m5Zf7hHk-g

Has anybody done anything that could be described as 'kind of blue in dub with heavy electric guitar'? Just chanced on a juxtaposition last night that had me wondering.

Isotope 217? O'Rang's "Herd of Instinct"? Squarepusher's "Music is Rotted"?

this?