Artist: Miles Davis · Album: Bitches Brew · Year: 1970 · Label: Columbia · Rank: 63 / 500
Bitches Brew is the sound of jazz detonating in slow motion. Miles Davis brings in rock amps, electric pianos, two drum kits, two bassists, free improvisation, tape edits, and sheer chaos—and shapes it into a new form: jazz fusion.
Nothing about this album is polite. That’s the point.
Controlled Turbulence
Miles rarely tells the band exactly what to play. Instead, he creates loose frameworks, gestures, cues, and lets the musicians collide. Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter—each one a universe of sound.
Electric Everything
The record takes rock volume, funk grooves, and avant-garde improvisation and dissolves them into a single swirling mass. It feels tribal, spacey, primal, futuristic—often all at once.
Teo Macero and the Art of the Edit
Producer Teo Macero splices tape, loops sections, rearranges performances— a radical use of the studio as compositional tool, long before electronic music made it standard practice.
Legacy
Jazz fusion, prog, post-rock, ambient, experimental electronic music: huge swaths of modern sound trace back to this album’s shockwave.