Marcus Miller, this is your redemption song. Marcus Miller. Marcus Miller, man, where do I begin? For so long, had I absolutely loathe what you did to one of my all-time favorite musicians. It was your slap bass that figuratively sunk Miles Davis’s career when he needed you the most — really. You were the one who showed “the promise”. You were the one heard on countless hit tracks from Luther Vandross, Edwin Birdsong, and Grover Washington Jr. amongst a huge session list. I imagine, Miles was expecting to hear the bassist from Don Cherry’s Here & Now, from Kazumi Watanabe’s To Chi Ka, from Lonnie Liston Smith’s Exotic Mysteries…but what did he get? Man, what did you give him? How could you. You gave him the bassist from David Sanborn’s Backstreet, the 4-string slapper from George Benson’s In Your Eyes, and worse: the basic-boogieman from his self-titled debut. Marcus, you did him (and by extension us) dirty! Everyone wanted Miles. They wanted the man with the horn, but you gave us Star People! Be that as it may, the only reason — the only reason — you are redeemed, in my book, is because of your work with Miles on Music From Siesta.
First of all, who knew you had it in you? Hot take 1: just a year earlier you had wasted the talents of Omar Hakim, Paulinho Da Costa and the man himself (Miles Davis) on the sad smooth jazz of Tutu — sorry, to all the pony-tailed guitar teachers who love it. Tutu was a gimmicky, thoroughly dated mess, yet, somehow, film director Mary Lambert (fresh off directing Janet Jackson’s “Control”, yowza) saw something in you to empower y’all two knuckleheads to make a soundtrack to a bawdy noir she was directing in Spain, one that would be known as that year’s “Blue Velvet”. Hot take 2: “Blue Velvet” stinks, so just imagine how much Mary Lambert’s “Siesta” must have stunk even worse? Proof positive: her future career directing such low-brow movies like Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary and more. Now, if her name was David Lynch… I digress, but before I throw you on some other, weird, movie critic tangent, let’s bring it back.
Somehow, Marcus, you took this pitch as a resolve to actually do something special. Miles was bereft of time, trying too hard to one up Prince at the latest blow up, hang spot on Rodeo Drive, so he left it up to you as he said too: “Write some music and it should sound something like this (pointing to Sketches From Spain)”; “When you need a trumpet, just let me know.”
Made on a very small budget, in a complete rush, Music From Siesta, was supposed to honor and revisit the themes/music from Miles and Gil Evans’ monumental Sketches of Spain. That way it did so, though, was in such a way, that one can’t tell whether it was the brilliant outcome of a truly inspired session or sheer, dumb mega luck. Reimagining the music of Spain via FM synthesis, and a vast assortment of digital samplers and drum machines, Marcus found inspiration in the nocturnal spirit, if not the moonlit minimalism of that totemic release.
On the best tracks, long runtimes stretch out various musical vignettes and sections into gorgeous, very askew takes on flamenco, latin jazz, and filtered “Spanish” atmosphere. Witness “Theme For Augustine”, which uses the heavy mood-setting of the DX-7 to create a vibrating scene where Miles found a way to cut through in a way that wasn’t bullshitting you, in a way that actually sounds timeless and still contemporary. If you’ve heard the dusty, floating instrumentals from Joan Bibiloni’s Silencio Roto or For A Future Smile you would stand to hear similar faire, here as well.
Tracks that pick up the tempo, like “Conchita – Lament”, find Marcus weaving erstwhile flamenco into a gorgeous, even danceable, groove that reaches into very weird Arabic and unplaceable world music. This could be Balearic, certainly it was a fourth world, with no world music to perfectly place it under. For once, Marcus’s bass technique perfectly fits the percussive atmosphere. In the end, it’s quite possibly one of the most inorganic tracks that sounds weirdly organic, on the record.
Future bad-ass, Omar Hakim redeems himself, if you go back a few tracks to “Siesta/Kitt’s Kiss/Lost In Madrid Part II”, as well, by mixing knocking castanet-like drumming into whatever Marcus was doing with his avant tango thing, going on in the background. A testament to the work of Marcus Miller here, is how little you notice his bass playing. In “Lost in Madrid Part IV/ Rat Dance/ The Call” somehow he finds a middle ground for “The Blue Years”-era Tangerine Dream and Miles to coexist — fading in a brief snippet of heavy, minimal “techno” to do so. The following track then does a 180, and plunders that pining New Age that Toshifumi Hinata was fomenting in Japan, via even more languid ambient electro-rondas. Miles never sounded as into it in his ‘80s work as he would here, if I may so myself, as his trumpet simply swoops effortlessly over this music.
There’s just so many things right about this album, and so deserving of accolades, that it perfectly falls into what this blog has always aimed to do: share music not because it’s rare (although this one was never released in the U.S.), exclusive, pricey, or weird — but instead because it is genuinely unheralded, great music. And damn, Marcus, you’ve done us (and by extension Miles) amazingly good, here. Who the hell knows where the album cover came from, but for sure, if it doesn’t fit the music much better than the movie ever will.