Miles Davis Quintet – Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5, available now, has been given a high 7.5 rating by Pitchfork. Here is an excerpt from their review:

Virtually two-thirds of Miles Davis Quintet – Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5 is the making of—and love letter to—his 1967 album Miles Smiles, one of his finest works that’s often overlooked in “best-of” Miles shortlists. The rest of Freedom Jazz Dance includes reels of material that would later appear on Nefertiti and Water Babies. The alternate takes and the lively banter plop you right there in the studio as the artistic process unfolds. It’s what differentiates Freedom Jazz Dance from past volumes of this enthralling series, which were all live concerts that showed how Miles’s groups evolved on the bandstand. Here the studio is the laboratory—and what a studio, the storied 30th Street Studio, a converted Armenian Evangelical Church between Second and Third Avenue, where Kind of Blue was recorded seven years earlier. Though compared to what the new quintet was up to by 1966, Kind of Blue sounds almost quaint.

… This set is found treasure, especially to Miles completists, enthusiasts, musicians, and students. The producers don’t take jazz or Miles Davis fans lightly, or as ATMs. This documentation underscores the artistic process of one of American music’s most seminal bands.

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