Customer Reviews
Miles best with Tony Williams - By: C. J. Staples, 13 Jul 2008 
As a drummer I have to hold thisin high regard, there are a lot of drummers that love this recording, Tony Williams is still untouchable & with this recordingin my car, house & my work van I know that I'm gonna be happy all week every week, it's beautiful & haunting & yet when the action hits it's exactly what I want from jazz. If your not into jazz but want to try it, put this on repeat & let it convert you as it did me.....The other reviewers already say enough I just want to say...Listen to Tony Williams!
Darkly beautiful - a stunning album - By: IrishGit, 11 Oct 2004 My favorite Miles studio album. Dark, sensuous, exciting, mysterious, fluid. Miles never sounded better. His sound is strong & rich & he refrains from using the mute. Shorter twists & turns, caressing & lingering, turning each phrase inside out. The rhythm section is simply the bestin jazz - Williams' drumming is beyond compare. The compositions are beautiful & break new ground. The overall effect is of a volcano about to explode - you can sense the hot magma churning. The extra tracks add much. The recording is top notch & the album cover perfectly reflects the music. A perfect album.
Addictive shivers from the great Miles 60s quintet - By: Gareth Smyth, 24 Nov 2003 
A lot of improvisingin & around the melody on this one - including a bass solo from Ron Carter (it's not Dave Holland as the first reviewer suggested) on 'Pinocchio'.
Shorter wrote 'Nefertiti', 'Fall' & 'Pinocchio', Herbie Hancock wrote 'Madness' & 'Riot', & Tony Williams 'Hand Jive'. Butin the greater scheme of things I'm not sure what that really means - maybe they came up the melody & handed it over to the band for the creative fires to flare. For sure, it's the interaction & apparent fluidity (even telepathy) of the five musicians that is so addictive.
Nefertiti - like much of the work of the 1960s Miles quintet - is beloved by jazz musicians more than mass audiences, but don't let that worry you. This is hypnotic stuff, & there's always some twist to keep you coming back. The switch from Miles' trumpet to Wayne Shorter's sax on Hand Jive always gives me the shivers. And, yes, Tony Williams is extraordinary, a freefloating jazzer rather than someone beating out the time.
Has to be four stars, though. There's the complete Quintet recordings box set !!
Sublime Miles, inspired by Tony Williams - By: C. Nation, 17 Jan 2003 This was the first Miles I bought,in black vinyl when it was releasedin '68. Why I was drawn to buy it, I don't know. I knew little about jazz & nothing about Miles's music. As a new release, the album was on prominently displayin the shop & somehow, mesemerised by the cover [which I still find deeply enigmatic], I felt I had to buy it. I have played it constantly, ever since.
It has taken me years come to some modest understanding of this music, long after the extraordinary feeling conveyed by it had captivated me. The striking aspect of this album is the pivotal role played by drummer Tony Williams. It's remarkable that, at 17 years old, Williams's playing forms the canvas upon which Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter paint the forms & colours of this sublime music. Dave Holland's bass provides the rythmic underpinning, occasionally being visited by Williams, before he rejoins the othersin the forefront of the picture.
Nefertiti is no K of B. One doesn't relax straight into it on first hearing, as anyone surely does with that earlier album. It presents a complexity that K o B does not have, despite the K o B band having four solo voices, including the giant talent of Coltrane. The primary role that Williams plays on Neferetiti seems disturbing at first but [for me] the beautiful logic & feeling containedin this music has gradually revealed itself & has become endlessly rewarding & essential to my enjoyment of Miles Davis.
