PANGAEA

While I consider "In a Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew" to be among mankind's greatest achievements, the all-out guitar-heavy fusion towards the end of this leg of Davis' career appeals far less. I find Pangaea to be generally overrated, I'm afraid. There are two tracks, which funnily could only be enjoyed (?) in their intended form when released on CD in 1985 (or rather: when people got CD players a bit later than that).

I'm a sucker for long, slowly developing works that ebb and flow, but these two tracks simply fail to keep me interested. For much of the time there is so very little happening, the rhythm section just going on and on to a single chord interspersed with loooong solos on top. Instead of dynamically drifting from one part to another the music tends to suddenly stop dead, then get going again in another tempo. It's such a contrast to, say, "Shhh/peaceful" on "in a silent way", which superficially is equally simple, but with a constant, bubbling stream of ideas bubbling under the surface. Here, below the simple surface I find largely emptiness.

To me much of Pangaea sounds like a hugely overqualified rock band which doesn't know when to stop jamming. OK, that's too harsh -- there are great moments here if you have the patience. But the Davis discography is vast, and life is short, so I'll listen to the (live tracks of) Live Evil or something next time.