You either hate this album with a passion or you love it is one of the groundbreaking works of jazz. Full disclosure: I am in the second camp. The album is a glorious mass of confusion, sporting no less than an seven-man rhythm section and three horns handling the bulk of the leads. There were already plenty of indications something like this was going to happen and many of the pieces were in place in the waning days of the Second Quintet (Davis-Shorter-Hancock-Carter-Williams) and In a Silent Way, which introduced guitar as a regular part of the Miles Davis sound. This period would unleashed the diaspora of jazz-rock fusion that held dominance in the 1970's, giving us the likes of Return to Forever, Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, acts that would make Wynton Marsalis's nose bleed, ears ring, and hair fall out.
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