“Bitches Brew” in Quad!

[Vito Corleone]

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Have any of you ever heard this? Always a trippy and transcendent experience, this album mixed into quad is on a whole ‘nother level!

 

unfortunately this is only available as a Japanese import, but man those Japanese know how to package things! This comes in an odd 7” packaging so not sure yet where to put it on my shelf. (With my singles??? Lol). And almost of the booklet is written in Japanese. But it’s pretty cool.

 

And the sound is amazing! Like hearing it again for the first time.

 

 

[Anderton]

Where did you find it? I'm a huge Miles Davis fan...to bad I don't have quad.

[Vito Corleone]

Where did you find it? I'm a huge Miles Davis fan...to bad I don't have quad.

 

It was recently released from Sony Japan. You can find it on CDJapan or other import websites. It’s the original 70s quad mix on SACD so you’d need a player that plays SACD and a surround sound system.

 

But it’s an AMAZING mix. Any audio engineer or musician would love it, I would think.

[nat whilk II]

I've given Bitches Brew a lot of listens over a lot of decades.

 

I give it many +++s for stirring up the pot of experimentation in that day. Weather Report pretty much got planted as an idea from those sessions and WR has remained an endless source of inspiration for me ever since.

 

But Bitches Brew itself - I just can't quite give it more than 3 out of 5 - when Miles gets 10 out of 5 from me when he's hitting the ball full on.

 

What am I missing? Eddicate me.....

 

nat

 

 

 

[Vito Corleone]

I don't know if I can tell you what you're missing if it doesn't already resonate with you and you've already listened to it lots. If it's not already a "4" or "5" for you, then I don't know what more I can offer to up that for you that you probably haven't already heard yourself.

 

Yes, it's significant primarily for breaking so much ground in the fusion arena and I agree that Weather Report took it to the next level at least in terms of being more melodic and rocking a bit harder with it. I'm such a big fan of so much of their work. Joe Zawinul may have been God, IMO.

 

But Zawinul and Corea playing off each other... Two drummers and two bassists working simultaneously... Shorter and Maupin and Miles all soloing.... John McLaughlin weaving in and out of it all. It's a masterful cacophony of sound.

 

and spread open even wider in a quad mix with them coming at you from all for corners? It sounds like you're in the middle of the room with some of the greatest players in music history.

 

But I agree that it's not a perfect album. Some of the ideas fall apart. You hear them building to something and they don't always quite get there. But that's also part of the art of it, I think, all these years later. And it allowed others to finish what it started. WR. Hancock on "Headhunters" Cobham on "Spectrum". Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever.

 

It's not my favorite Miles album by a long shot. I agree with you that when he hit it full on, there's no comparison: Kind of Blue, In A Silent Way, Sketches of Spain. So much of the stuff from the Prestige years. (BTW, there are great surround mixes of those three albums available as well. All different in their own way for how they were created.)

 

But it is what it is. His "Sgt Pepper's", IMO. Not the best album in their catalog and flawed in many ways. But nothing was more influential or spoke of its time.

[Vito Corleone]

There's been a bit of a mini-movement seeing a lot of these old 70s quad mixes being re-released over the last few years. A lot of odd ball stuff from various sources around the world. There's a small but loyal fanbase for this stuff of which I consider myself a member.

 

It's very cool that so many of these old mixes are being unearthed as the tapes probably haven't been touched in 40+ years in most cases and they risk being lost forever otherwise.

 

And the stuff from Columbia is the best. These guys really took the quad mixes seriously and they did some really amazing work. (In a lot of other cases, it's pretty obvious the degree to which the quad mix was an afterthought.)

 

Chicago released a box set on BluRay of all their old quad mixed albums (9 of 'em!) a couple of years back. A great band with some great albums that really shine in that format.

 

But this stuff requires dedicated listening. Which, sadly, seems to be a lost endeavor. Nobody just sits and listens to music anymore. Too bad.

[nat whilk II]

I don't know if I can tell you what you're missing if it doesn't already resonate with you and you've already listened to it lots. If it's not already a "4" or "5" for you, then I don't know what more I can offer to up that for you that you probably haven't already heard yourself.

 

Yes, it's significant primarily for breaking so much ground in the fusion arena and I agree that Weather Report took it to the next level at least in terms of being more melodic and rocking a bit harder with it. I'm such a big fan of so much of their work. Joe Zawinul may have been God, IMO.

 

But Zawinul and Corea playing off each other... Two drummers and two bassists working simultaneously... Shorter and Maupin and Miles all soloing.... John McLaughlin weaving in and out of it all. It's a masterful cacophony of sound.

 

and spread open even wider in a quad mix with them coming at you from all for corners? It sounds like you're in the middle of the room with some of the greatest players in music history.

 

But I agree that it's not a perfect album. Some of the ideas fall apart. You hear them building to something and they don't always quite get there. But that's also part of the art of it, I think, all these years later. And it allowed others to finish what it started. WR. Hancock on "Headhunters" Cobham on "Spectrum". Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever.

 

It's not my favorite Miles album by a long shot. I agree with you that when he hit it full on, there's no comparison: Kind of Blue, In A Silent Way, Sketches of Spain. So much of the stuff from the Prestige years. (BTW, there are great surround mixes of those three albums available as well. All different in their own way for how they were created.)

 

But it is what it is. His "Sgt Pepper's", IMO. Not the best album in their catalog and flawed in many ways. But nothing was more influential or spoke of its time.

 

Thx for the thoughtful response. I recall reading somewhere that the Bitches Brew album was created by editing down and patching together sections of long jams. After I read that, I went back and listened and yeah, it seemed to help me make sense of the sort of meandering lack of focus that is what bugs me the most about the album.

 

I've never been one to trust my own taste particularly. When other careful and observant listeners take to something and I don't, it's, as the movie said, "a splinter in my mind" that I worry with. So much music gets panned because it doesn't meet listener's preconceived expectations. Nothing beats, for me, the experience of suddenly getting something that I've never gotten before, maybe even after decades of exposure. It's like exploring your own mind for hidden gold.

 

nat

 

[Vito Corleone]

 

Thx for the thoughtful response. I recall reading somewhere that the Bitches Brew album was created by editing down and patching together sections of long jams. After I read that, I went back and listened and yeah, it seemed to help me make sense of the sort of meandering lack of focus that is what bugs me the most about the album.

 

I've never been one to trust my own taste particularly. When other careful and observant listeners take to something and I don't, it's, as the movie said, "a splinter in my mind" that I worry with. So much music gets panned because it doesn't meet listener's preconceived expectations. Nothing beats, for me, the experience of suddenly getting something that I've never gotten before, maybe even after decades of exposure. It's like exploring your own mind for hidden gold.

 

nat

 

Good way to put things!

 

One of the things I like most about the album is it one of those, for me, that every time I listen to it, I hear something new. Few albums continue to be so revealing so many years later.

 

That's the reason I posted about this quad mix to begin with. Just about the time I thought there was nothing really left to learn from this album, now suddenly I'm hearing it in a completely different way.