"He Loved Him Madly" is a half-hour jazz dirge in tribute to Duke Ellington, who had died one month before; Brian Eno cited it as a lasting influence on his own work.
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An ethereal gloom is cast from the very start by the organist - who must be Miles, though organ is listed in the album's annotation, no organ player credited - one of three guitarists (Cosey, Lucas and Gaumont), and anonymously disembodied snare drum rolls. The effect is of emptiness. Gothic in its chill, this requiem for the greatest jazz composer to imprint his music on the world, created by a man who admits to being abject with loss in the composition's title as he never admitted to elsewhere, is not a New Orleans marching band-and-burial society traipse to the cemetery, followed by riotous ragging of "Didn't he ramble?" and everyone-invited second line celebration. It begins more like sound effects appropriate to a Beckett play.
Through a torturous trek of heavy-gauge guitar noodling, out-of-sync tattoos, and inexplicable shifts (6:22 and 9:25 seconds) the music arrives at some definitive harmonic resolve at 10:12. At 10:28 there is an obvious rend, or edit- it must have been intentionally so - leading to the drums establishing regular metric ticking, as if cueing the pace of a cortege, and congas supplying deeper percussive accents. Liebman's alto flute enters at 12:45 in the middle of it's range, and intones a series of unhurried, sylvan phrases, leaving copious space between them. The bass plays virtually sub-audio tones, also sparingly.
Miles enters on trumpet at 16:08, sounding achingly bereft. His solo, employing digital delay for an echo effect and limited wah-wah the intensifies the sobbing sound, continues for four minutes. There is no explicit tune, only the expression of grief and loneliness amid a dour ambiance. The elements gain a fullness and more actively stated pulse prior to a last organ swirl, guitar lines and cut-off ending on an upbeat - as if to say the end comes and life continues.
Miles had suffered a heart attack while on tour in Brazil just before he learned of Ellington's death. He recorded "He Loved Him Madly" a month later, maybe fixed on thoughts of his own end(his burial plot at Woodlawn Cemetery neighbors Ellington's.)
Through a torturous trek of heavy-gauge guitar noodling, out-of-sync tattoos, and inexplicable shifts (6:22 and 9:25 seconds) the music arrives at some definitive harmonic resolve at 10:12. At 10:28 there is an obvious rend, or edit- it must have been intentionally so - leading to the drums establishing regular metric ticking, as if cueing the pace of a cortege, and congas supplying deeper percussive accents. Liebman's alto flute enters at 12:45 in the middle of it's range, and intones a series of unhurried, sylvan phrases, leaving copious space between them. The bass plays virtually sub-audio tones, also sparingly.
Miles enters on trumpet at 16:08, sounding achingly bereft. His solo, employing digital delay for an echo effect and limited wah-wah the intensifies the sobbing sound, continues for four minutes. There is no explicit tune, only the expression of grief and loneliness amid a dour ambiance. The elements gain a fullness and more actively stated pulse prior to a last organ swirl, guitar lines and cut-off ending on an upbeat - as if to say the end comes and life continues.
Miles had suffered a heart attack while on tour in Brazil just before he learned of Ellington's death. He recorded "He Loved Him Madly" a month later, maybe fixed on thoughts of his own end(his burial plot at Woodlawn Cemetery neighbors Ellington's.)
