Miles Davis - Nefertiti [Holland Import]

Nefertiti turns the jazz rulebook inside out, and this Holland import pressing brings the second great quintet's most hypnotic album back to the turntable.

Released in 1968, it was one of the last all-acoustic records Miles Davis made with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams before electricity took over his music. Teo Macero produced, and by this point the band had become a laboratory, with Davis happy to let his younger players steer the ship.

The title track is the famous experiment. Shorter's "Nefertiti" has the horns repeat its haunting melody again and again without taking solos, while Williams and Hancock improvise underneath, turning the rhythm section into the lead voice. Shorter also wrote the drifting, melancholy "Fall" and the playful "Pinocchio", while Hancock's "Madness" pushes toward something far more restless. Williams contributes "Hand Jive", and his drumming across the album is a clinic in pure, restless invention.

It is a record that rewards repeated listening, revealing new conversations between the players every time the needle drops. For anyone tracing the line from Kind of Blue to Bitches Brew, Nefertiti is the hinge where the old forms bent and quietly gave way, and it still sounds remarkably modern today.