From the CratesNo. 01
Miles in an elevator
A film score made up on the spot, in Paris, in one night of December 1957.
Louis Malle was twenty-five and making his first fiction feature, a noir about a perfect murder that goes wrong when the killer gets stuck in a lift. For the music he went to Miles Davis, who was in Paris that winter.
Miles brought in a French rhythm section and the young saxophonist Barney Wilen, watched the film, and played to it. There was barely anything written down. What came out is some of the loneliest, most cinematic trumpet ever recorded: muted, close, full of space, like someone walking home at three in the morning.
This copy is the 1988 Fontana issue of the complete recordings, with about twenty minutes the original album left out.
Listen for
- "Générique" The opening theme. Count how few notes he needs.
- "Florence sur les Champs-Élysées" Jeanne Moreau walking the city at night, in trumpet form.
After this one, or something like it?
