Getting to grips with the music of the late Miles Dewey Davis is not unlike trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe - there's always so much more to be discovered. It may be that the music of Miles Davis is actually the answer to the mysteries of the universe, in which case I can just forget about unravelling anything, relax, sit back and enjoy listening to it. This has been a near-full time activity for me over the last few months.

The particular period that interests me the most are the years filled with his electric voodoo throb when he turned his back on the purists and transformed himself into a band-leading Jimi Hendrix with a horn. In his review in The Wire for Davis' live albums from this period, Simon Reynolds wrote, "No music makes me feel more inadequate or induces a stronger feeling of temerity - for 'description', however floridly imagistic, always seems like a reduction, and 'explanation' can only ever be a foolhardy projection." Reynolds has hit the trumpet squarely on the head. I cannot describe his music in a manner which does it justice any more than I could perform it, and any explanation of its intricacies is far beyond me. Miles Davis' music was not created so a half-baked whitey such as myself could dribble abstractions and similes into a word processor. Instead, for the benefit of any readers not already familiar with this most-exciting and rewarding body of work, here is a little of the background to the recent re-releases of a music which rivals Cheops' pyramid in its breath-taking magnificence and seldom equalled enormity of vision.

Miles' transformation began in 1968 when his new wife introduced him to the music of Jimi Hendrix which, along with James Brown and Sly Stewart, was to have a significant influence on the direction he was to take his music. The recent death of his friend John Coltrane and the subsequent depression he suffered helped nurture his need to create something altogether new. A meeting was arranged between Davis and Hendrix initiated by Hendrix's manager as Jimi, wanting to take his guitar-orientated music further into the jazz domain, felt he could learn something valuable from Miles. The two met up and hit it off, Davis was clearly impressed with Hendrix's aptitude to pick up what he was showing him, despite Hendrix's inability to read music and him being solely self-taught. In the end, the two ended up gleaning more than each had expected from the other. Miles writes in his autobiography, "He had a natural ear for hearing music. So I'd play different shit for him, show him that way. Or I'd play him a record of mine or Trane's and explain to him what we were doing. Then he started incorporating things I told him into his albums. It was great. He influenced me and I influenced him, and that's the way great music is always made. Everybody showing everybody else something and then moving on from there."

The middle of 1968 saw Davis' desired new direction become a serious sortie when he began piecing together a new band of musicians including Dave Holland on electric bass, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Josef Zawinul on electric piano and John McLaughlin on guitar. The resultant album, In A Silent Way, was welcomed by critics as being his most important work since Kind Of Blue. Steve Voce wrote in the Jazz Journal, "On this record Davis and his men have taken the idiom of contemporary 'underground-pop', actually moved into it, and then gone on to play jazz solos in that idiom. They have achieved such a high quality within these confines that I imagine it will be impossible for anyone ever to justify an underground record in comparison."

This is a very economical and restrained album, the music never takes off or touches down but glides magnificently across the thermals, the style was very distinctively Miles, but the context had shifted dramatically. There was still so much further to go, however.

Live recordings that circulate from the ensuing tour reveal an incendiary and urgent delivery from a band already way beyond greatness. By August 1969, when Davis and his slightly modified and expanded band returned to the studio to record Bitches Brew, Davis had a clear vision to take his music out of the jazz clubs where he felt it was too easily overlooked and place it on a much bigger stage. The developing obsession with sales and size among the record companies had led to jazz being sidelined in favour of the much higher selling rock acts of the time. Record companies valued two polarities - pop and classical, with the former subsidising the latter. Jazz, being neither as big a seller as pop nor perceived by white music industry magnates as being as high brow an art form as the classics, was too frequently marginalised. Davis wanted his music to receive the attention he felt it commanded, and for him to receive the remuneration he felt he deserved. Bitches Brew very successfully forced record company plutocrats to acknowledge the importance of jazz itself as an art form, one worth investing in both financially and culturally. Miles wrote in his autobiography, "What they didn't understand was that I wasn't prepared to be a memory yet, wasn't prepared to be listed on Columbia's so-called classical list. I had seen the way to the future with my music, and I was going for it like I had always done. Not for Columbia and their record sales, and not for trying to get some young white record buyers. I was going for it for myself, for what I wanted and needed in my own music. I wanted to change course, had to change course for me to continue to believe in and love what I was playing."

The music itself utilised a distinctively rock beat, with soloists largely kept in the background with the exception of Miles' trumpet which shimmers and stutters over the top. The pieces wash all around the listener as he or she splashes in the surf, gently pulled further and further out to sea, gradually drawn into the underwater world that the mermusicians of Bitches Brew secretly inhabit.

All Miles Davis' electric releases reflect their content beautifully on the covers, clearly stating the music's slight psychedelic predilection, without overstating in a way that would seem dated today. Bitches Brew's front cover painting by Abdul Mati depicts the assimilation of black Africans with the elements and natural world. A naked couple stand staring out to sea, closely hugging each other while watching a distant thunderstorm over the ocean. The woman's hair trails off and merges with the clouds and wind, as does a pink, fiery flower head beside them. A third, larger black face, quite apart from the other two figures, with lips the same blue as the ocean and eyes the same blue as the sky looks off into the distance, protective and god-like with a calmer sky behind her. This figure has sweat droplets running from her face, presumably giving the sky its rain and the ocean its water, reinforcing the notion that all life began in Africa. When the sleeve opens out, the picture becomes complete, with the black 'protector' on the front transformed into a white face, identical in every way except skin colour and with blood droplets in the place of the sweat, this time running off and splashing on the pink flower, giving it its colour. Two hands, one black and one white have their fingers entwined, with their two ring fingers extending to swirl into the black and white faces respectively. The sleeve is a highly effective statement both of black consciousness and racial unity, and, despite the misogyny of the language used in the title, reinforces the symbolic / mythological relationship between woman and ocean, and emphasises the femininity of the music.

The album was an enormous success, selling over half a million copies, many to individuals who had never bought a jazz album in their life before, and the band played in front of huge crowds supporting the Grateful Dead, Santana and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Miles' own audience was divided over the album, with many of the jazz purists uncertain or even worried about what they were hearing. Not so Ron Brown, who wrote in the Jazz Journal, "It's anybody's guess whether or not a record like this will result in acceptance of Miles' music by the kind of audience he's trying to reach by appearing at this year's Isle of Weight Festival; I just hope that it's not going to put off those fans to whom anything connected with rock is anathema, because I believe that the stabbing, emotional jazz that Miles is playing in this fiercely contemporary context is an affirmation of the kind of values Satchmo himself would uphold." Interestingly, Satchmo himself was not a fan of such new directions in jazz.

Miles also took new directions in fashion, and changed his image drastically, ditching his suits of old in favour of often brightly coloured African and Indian clothing, following similar geographical influences as his music and reflecting his growing interest in black consciousness.

1970 saw the recording of several albums, at their worst only nearly-perfect. Firstly the soundtrack for Jack Johnson was recorded in the spring, live shows at the Filmore West, San Francisco (Black Beauty) and at the Filmore East, New York (Miles Davis at Filmore) while the studio sessions and concert recordings which became Live-Evil were spread across the year.

While Bitches Brew had largely evolved in the studio, the pieces for Live-Evil had been more fully realised prior to recording, and the mixture short studio tracks with extended live tracks blends seamlessly in texture and content. Looking back on this and the flurry of other live releases from this period, we can garner an inkling of the vast quantity of complex and varied music that was flowing through Davis and his bands of the time. In his autobiography he laments the lack of a 1969 live recording and release, suggesting that the band was evolving at such a rate that any tour not documented left a hole in the narrative flow of their progression; marooning a vital creative outpouring on an exotic island to which we cannot return. Many artists often rely on live releases as contractual obligations during creatively lean times, or to remind the audience that the artist is still out there. However, rather than being superfluous fodder, the Miles Davis live releases from the early / mid 1970s are worthy of much more than a partial once-over from the listener.

The Live-Evil cover, again by Abdul Mati, continues the theme of Bitches Brew from a different angle, again emphasising positive images of womanhood and blackness. The front sleeve (the 'live' or 'life' side) features a semi-naked woman whose robes flow across the cover, rearing up into a black female face which is breathing life into the woman's pregnant belly. The reverse sleeve (the 'evil' side) features an ugly web-footed being encrusted with barnacles and with bullets slung across his shoulder, squatting above a large cavernous hole in the ground, pointing at the viewer in an accusatory manner. You know you have no choice but to descend to the depths below.

The saxophonist Gary Bartz's sleeve notes to the 1997 reissue illustrate the fluidity of the music in that even band members were not entirely sure of the song titles: "The second disc begins with 'Selim.' I never heard Miles or anyone else in the band ever say those words, but it's in my notes, so we'll call it that for now." Familiar themes and phrases occasionally crop up in unfamiliar settings, for example, the medley of "Gemini / Double Image" hints toward John McLaughlin's searing wah guitar phrases used in the later 'Go Ahead John' from Big Fun. Ideas are not so much recycled as returned to later to develop more fully or utilise in a different environment.

A performance at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival continued to expand Miles' audience, and similarly continued to further ruffle critic's feathers. As he stated in his autobiography (with no apparently intentional irony) "Some of the critics were talking about how aloof I was, but that didn't bother me…"

A planned recording session with Jimi Hendrix, the very guitarist that Miles had wanted in his band ever since he had first heard him, tragically never occurred due to Hendrix's untimely death. The guitarist continued to exert a powerful influence on Miles' music, however, as his trumpet was increasingly fed through a wah wah foot pedal, producing a remarkably Hendrix-like tone to his playing. Pondering also on the predominantly white nature of Hendrix's audience, Miles also started to consider his apparent move into the white arena over the previous couple of years, performing to largely white audiences, and decided it was time to attract a different crowd yet again. He wanted his concerts to be filled with young, funky street-wise blacks, all shaking their asses to a new, more primal music. Thus On The Corner (1972) was born into a largely cold and unwelcoming world.

The purist jazz buffs were now deeply put out by Miles deliberately turning his back on them, and even 25 years later opinion about his most controversial album is still highly divided. Reviews at the time dismissed the music as simply boring and lacking in inspiration. Ron Brown wrote in the Jazz Journal, "They do say that Miles is living on advances from Columbia, so high has his life-style become, and that he feels compelled to make records frequently whether he has any ideas or not; this would explain the existence of this very poor LP rather neatly."

Brown's interpretation is little short of nonsensical - the whirlwind of ideas that were firing Davis at this period was precisely what kept him in the studio, with the music flowing as long as the inspiration lasted. Brown then commented on Miles' intention to create music for black people, and, clearly feeling excluded from the party, stated: "…that of course is something I can't judge, but I'd like to think that nobody could be so easily pleased as to dig this record to any extent."

Quincey Troupe, in his book Miles And Me, revealed that he had been initially disappointed by the album, but that things started to slot into place on successive listens, now believing that it perfectly captured the essence of street life in a city such as New York. "Had I not been living in New York, perhaps I wouldn't have gotten into On The Corner on just my second hearing, but living there made me more receptive and helped me penetrate the music's density and get right down into its rhythmic core." Troupe went on to consider the rich mixture of musics to be found within the album's grooves: "On The Corner is definitely African-American urban funk tinged with jazz and Indian and African flavours. It's a jambalaya of gumbo from New Orleans. It's 'hip-hop' before 'hip-hop'. Indeed, it might have been the first hip-hop record released by a major label, with its recurring bass and high-hat drum rhythms punctuated by snare accents, its use of electrical instrumentation and its looping of the recording tape."

The centre piece to most jazz compositions is the solo, and On The Corner carries precious few solos and concentrates more on an oceanic ensemble-style playing, where musicians focus on their contribution to the whole rather than on their individual moment in the spotlight. Rhythms are tight, sharply focussed and funky as hell; slinking and sliding around all over the floor with serious attitude. The production, by Teo Macero, and richness of sound is quite boggling with the flavourful and vibrant bass sounds being particularly palatable to the feet. The Blaxploitation-esque cover by Corky McCoy (an old flatmate of Miles') takes a very different approach from Abdul Mati and is well tuned to the musical content. The 'funky street scene' cartoons give a perfect indication of just how far the music is even from Bitches Brew, never mind the pre-electric Miles.

A similar statement of intent was showcased on the live release In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall. The cover, again by Corky McCoy, showed a similar street scene, even with a few familiar faces from the previous sleeve. This was Miles' new audience, as observed by Quincey Trope: "I remember the crowd being younger and blacker than previous ones, but with lots of Latinos, whites and Asians too. It was certainly a more multicultural audience than any I had ever seen at Miles' concerts in the past." Critics hated In Concert even more than On The Corner. Charles le Vay wrote in the Jazz Journal: "Basically using the same format as On The Corner, In Concert being a double is twice as boring." Somewhat disingenuously le Vay concluded his review with a tiresome racist retort: "If it really is Africa he's after, why doesn't he lay off the Ferraris and go there - and stay there?" For his album to elicit such comments from a jazz reviewer, a breed not normally associated with a "send 'em back where they came from" attitude, Davis music was clearly lodging itself up a few noses, where it was itching away with glee.

Following the relative commercial failure of On The Corner, Big Fun dug back through Davis' mostly pre-On The Corner recordings and packaged together the product of various recording sessions and band line-ups from 1969 to 1972. This for me is Davis' greatest, most mouth-gapingly-resplendent success. 'Great Expectations' opens up with its astonishing 'Peter Gunn' bass groove in seven, which stealthily sidles up and retreats only to return again and again with increasing persistence and purposefulness to its prowl, as Davis fends it off with warning shots from his trumpet. 'Go Ahead John' features some of the most precise and intricate drumming on any of Davis' releases. The mosaic of rhythm provided by Jack DeJohnette is reminiscent of the metronomic exactitude of Can's man-machine drummer Jaki Leibezeit in its incredible uncluttered and unfaltering complexity. The title presumably refers to the gloriously fuzzed up and twisted wah-guitar that John McLaughlin treats us to, finally letting rip with the Hendrix influence that had been only hinted at so often before. 'Big Fun' is a misnomer, however. This isn't a return trip to the cut-a-rug funk of On The Corner, instead we have a broody and introverted musical meditation which, if On The Corner was a hip-hop blueprint, veers more into trip-hop territory.

The resultant tours spawned the release of another live double, Dark Magus recorded in 1974 at the Carnegie Hall, New York. While Big Fun is, for me, the pinnacle of his studio career, Dark Magus is one of the greatest live releases ever, exhibiting a confident swagger and expansive groove that suggested it would go on forever, and it very nearly does. The following year saw the final studio release from this period, Get Up With It, again a selection of tunes recorded at various times with various personnel over the last five years. The album still has its own identity however, with the half-hour opener, "He Loved Him Madly", touching upon the explosive atmospherics of early Tangerine Dream in a manner not heard elsewhere on Davis' albums.

Although not evident on any of his releases, the inspiration was now beginning to suffer from distraction. Davis' mounting drug and personal problems were fostering a musical disinterest and creative exhaustion after the 6 year long crowing glory to 30 years of intensely productive fecundity.

In 1975, exactly three decades on from when he replaced Dizzy Gillespie in Charlie Parker's band, Miles Davis hung up his horn and didn't resume playing for another 5 years, by which time the magic had changed and, despite numerous encouraging flashes, things could never be the same again. He died on 28^th September 1991 of heart failure.

As Ralph J. Gleason wrote in the original Bitches Brew sleeve-notes: "Sometimes we are lucky to have one of these people like Miles, like Dylan, like Duke, like Lenny here in the same world at the same time we are and we can live this thing and feel it and love it and be moved by it and it is a wonderful and rare experience and we should be grateful for it."

View Miles Davis' catalogue at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk