Does everyone suffer from an attack of verbal diarroeah (is that the right spelling?) when they start one of these things? The sudden urge to tell you that I watched a film with bloody Hugh Grant in it last night is almost overwhelming. Instead, I will talk of something that I've been thinking of a lot recently. Feel free to judge just how single you think I am from this post and the above mentioned Hugh Grant incident. Then send me new PS2 games. Or prostitutes.

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Following on from a recent thread I wrote for 20 Jazz Funk Greats (best music blog on the web, people. And not just 'cos I write for it) about Davis's terrifying testament to the bubbling powers of Funk; "Dark Magus", I should like to say a few words about the Great Grumpy Sod's beautiful "Kind of Blue".

This album has been soundtracking my life (and recently, all my nights) since I was about 14. At first I dismissed it somewhat, with all the fervour you'd expect from a teenage Sonic Youth fan who (thought he) only liked jazz that sounded like it was soundtracking a primary school being crushed by Galactus (hey, I still like that stuff, but y'know, not exclusively). Recently, however, I've started listening to it in a very different way. I've stopped thinking in terms of it being an unassailable masterpiece, have got past it's veneer of "Cool" and am thus enjoying so much more (if enjoy is the right word. See below).

To start with you just have to forget about it's nullifyingly classic status (Yeah I've just worked out how to use italics). Rather, I started thinking about it in terms of who from outside of jazz it influenced. The number one name I came up with was Talk Talk. Both their really fantastic albums (Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock) have Davies influences up the wazzoo. Muted trumpets, yep, and other cosmetic influences, but what really started coming through when I listened to the albums back to back, was a striving for something that not many other albums have gone for (let alone acheived). Namely; Grace.

Everything on this album, every spaced out note, is striving (and if there's one thing that Miles communicates when he plays trumpet it's longing) for a state of natural fluidity. Not Cool, with its rigid behaviour codes, modes of dress and all that bloody finger clicking, but rather a state free from constriction, with every pause and note seemingly held for a heartbeat and in every heartbeat, a lifetime. Miles's tone is so thin and fragile, but filled with inner strength and purpose. I don't play trumpet, but sometimes it sound like he's right on the edge of faltering. Of simply collapsing into the breeze. He never does, and his icy tone of pure heartbreak is our guide through this album. He never lets us down.

The support from the band has that same tone of near silent rigidity. How hard he worked them to get them where they are, I don't know (knowing Miles, it was probably bloody hard). But they are perfect. The heartbeat to the horns breaths and moans. Silent post-coital ecstasy in every note.

It's an album unique in jazz (as far as I know) for it's subtlety, awareness of space and emotional pull. I've been listening to it for half my life and I feel like I've just cracked it. It was well worth the effort.