Album: Miles Davis, Bitches Brew Live (Columbia)

The two concerts featured on this album – from the Newport Jazz Festival in 1969 and the Isle Of Wight Festival a year later – capture Davis on the cusp of creating another jazz revolution.

Though largely performing the same material, the difference between the two shows is extraordinary – due partly to the expanded palette offered by the electric keyboards of Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, Gary Bartz's sax and Airto's fervid percussion, not forgetting Dave Holland's switch to electric bass. While inaudible at Newport, Holland's lines writhe funkily through the IOW set as Miles's trumpet hunts down new sounds. It's jazz reconstituting after meltdown, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis: free-wheeling, edgy, unpredictable and coruscating, and about as hot as this legend of cool ever got.

DOWNLOAD THIS Directions; Bitches Brew; It's About that Time; Spanish Key