Miles Davis Decoy (Smoke)

Limited edition of 2000 numbered copies on smokey coloured 180-gram audiophile vinyl. Decoy is a 1984 album by the famous jazz musician Miles Davis, re- corded in 1983. Robert Irving III on keyboards took over the role that Miles had assumed with a true sense of harmony and only a rudi- mentary mastery of synthetic sounds and movements. Irving shared the responsibilities of directing with the trumpet player's nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr., but Al Foster continued to lead the tempo. John Scofield drew the funk of bassist Darryl Jones in the direction of chromatic abstraction. The two tracks that he cowrote with Miles are fragments of solos, "That's What Happened" reprising the beginning of his solo on "Speak" (Star People). Decoy offered a good balance between the dominant funk that sub- sequently took over and the jazz tradition, reflected by Scofield's angularities, Marsalis' freedom of tone, and the breadth of Miles' playing that had recovered it's full power.