Esp
E.S.P.marks the great divide between the conservative hard bop/soul jazz directions of Miles Davis'sAt the Blackhawkband and the freely inflected, collective explorations of his '60s quintet. Egged on by young firebrands Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, Davis extends his core melodic principles while making his peace with post-modernists such as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor--all the while on a collision course with the blues, R&B;, funk, and freeform psychedelia of his post-Bitches Brewperiod (as presaged by the generic but spirited boogaloo rendition of a straight eight rock beat on "Eighty-One"). The arrival of Wayne Shorter galvanized this quintet, Hancock in particular. It is in the serpentine minimalism of his tenor, and the moody, impressionistic ambiguity of the pianist's chords on Shorter's ballads, such as "Iris," that this ensemble first hints at the kind of amorphous harmonies, rhythmic plasticity, and intuitive collective interplay that distinguishedSorcererandFilles de Kilimanjaro. And in the jittery, urban sprawl of 19-year-old Tony Williams's prelude to "Agitation" is the seed-germ of the polyrhythmic, stop-and-go pulse time he and Carter perfected onMiles Smiles, and his arrival as a front-line solo voice onNefertiti.--Chip Stern