Miles Davis - Rubberband

The Guardian 60

(Rhino/Warner)
This long-awaited remake of the pop-infused 1985 sessions may not quite do Davis justice but it hits compelling highs

‘When I’m playing, I’m never through. It’s unfinished,” Miles Davis said in a revealing interview with the NME in 1985. “I like to find a place to leave for someone else to finish it. That’s where the high comes in.” As it undoubtedly would have when John Coltrane was reacting to the teasing daydreams curling from Davis’s trumpet-bell. But he never got to find that place with 1985’s pop-oriented Rubberband sessions, ditched after three months’ work by his new record label, Warner Bros. The tapes have finally been reinvented – 28 years after his death – by Davis’s drummer nephew Vince Wilburn Jr, and original producers Randy Hall and Attala Zane Giles. Vocal celebs Lalah Hathaway and Ledisi take the parts originally intended for Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau.

The Guardian 60

(Rhino/Warner)

Newly signed to the Warner Bros label in 1985, Miles Davis set about recording an album intended to capture a new, young audience. He was given a more or less free hand and there were rumours of Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau being involved. But after three months, Warners, impatient at what they considered to be a lack of progress, pulled the plug. The tapes were shelved and there they remained for 34 years, until tracked down by Miles’s nephew, Vince Wilburn Jr, who had been the drummer on the aborted album.

The idea was to finish it and present the result as a long-delayed new work, featuring vocalists Ledisi and Lalah Hathaway. The Davis trumpet is unmistakable, even when processed through wah-wah, echo, etc, but there’s not enough of him. On See I See, the only track on which he really features, we get a taste of characteristic late Miles, but it fades after about four minutes. The rest is scraps and tantalising hints. That’s all the producers had to work with. Davis completists will grab this, but others may find there’s just not enough meat in the sandwich.