1001 Albums Number 20

Miles Davis – Kind of Blue

I didn't think that much of the last Miles Davis album on this list (Birth of the Cool) but the highly regarded Kind of Blue works a little better for me.

It's much more of an arty album, divided into five long tracks which are still in Davis' 'cool jazz' style, but which have more of a modern, bebop influence in the stuttering rhythms and chromatic melodies, making it immediately more appealing to me. All the same the music is still laid back and inoffensive to a degree that I find almost aggravating, but I still appreciate the artistry even when the mood is not my cup of tea.

I do particularly like the last track, 'Flamenco Sketches', which has some nice tension between the mellow jazz and a melancholy flamenco guitar, but it seems to be the case that, by and large, Miles Davis and I just have fundamentally different desires as to what we want out of music.