Miles Davis on Mobile Fidelity - Three To Review - Round About Midnight, Milestones, In A Slient Way:

Seems like a good time, with the recent announcement by MOFI of a bunch more prime Miles Davis titles, to take a look at a few that have come on the market this year.

Let me say from the outset that I have these also on SACD, and have ripped the DSD ISO's to my hard drive, and digitally - at least in DSD - these are outstanding remasters. For the most part, the DSD of these titles exceeds the earlier Japanese SACD sonically. I am less certain that the Japanese SACD's of later titles like Jack Johnson and Filles De Kilimanjaro will do so also, but that remains to be seen.

The vinyl MOFI incarnations are sonically a different animal. MOFI have struggled at times with vinyl - and overall, I would not say their vinyl mastering is on the same level as their digital, although it has improved dramatically over the past 2 years. Perhaps the limiting factor is half-speed mastering, which I generally have found to produce a bass deficit.

Listening to Milestones (here in stereo) I have to say the sound is remarkable. There is an openness, a three dimensional quality - and tonality MOFI just gets SO right. Miles is creamy, but then bites and spits, the edges on his notes, particularly when he pinches a note of hits a curt staccato note, are presented with all the nuance the master tape possesses. Miles never had a big tone, and he was never the storming player that Hubbard was, or Dizzy, or even Morgan. Miles was subtle, and used space and an economic note choice to great effect, and like many great players of that era, was brought up on tone as the attribute to strive for, and to finish every note - attributes that have largely been lost today. This is what made Miles a great player, and a great reissue like this reminds me of that and drives it home - it has subtlety, nuance, and a kaleidoscope of tone. MOFI gets Coltrane's 'sound', his unique tone, so completely, and no other issue of this music has ever had that 'sound' so exactly as it was in the studio. Coltrane's tone will never be heard more true than it is on these reissues.

In a way, Round About Midnight has that Coltrane tone even more realistic. I never cared for the title cut, but I 'get' it now, which I suppose is what a good reissue should do - give cause for re-evaluation. Again here, the range of tonal colour is astonishing, and sonically what has been a 'dark' record now becomes a much clearer, more light - infused affair, to the better. Garland sounds nothing like he does on his many Prestige appearances - where on Prestige he sounds like a barrel house lounge player, here he shimmers with a light touch, beautiful. Way better than the (very good) Speakers Corner. Pressing is a late 2012/early 2013 one - RTI went through a rough patch there with a bad batch of vinyl they had to work through, and the pressing visually isn't a pretty sight, but cleaned with my usual new LP method - Nitty Gritty FirstRV - it comes up great.

Now on to In A Silent Way, a very different recording, being both later and heavily spliced together. It is another absolute classic. This is the birth of fusion, and even could be considered the birth of ambient. Obviously the analog master - an ugly splice remains intact, which surely would have been cleaned up if the mastering went digital at any point. The record was intended to be listened to at a quiet level, so that is how I approached it - and even at a relatively modest level, the remastering is rich and subtle, with a deep low end. The pressing is superb. This is a model reissue, exceeding my original and my Japanese pressings by a significant margin. It's all about getting closer to the music, and this one is another case of bringing a fresh perspective - it is interesting how rich Zawinul's organ is, contrasted with Hancock's almost funky comping, Miles floats above ethereal and piercing, Holland brings it back to ground. Masterpiece - highly recommended!

A note on MOFI remastering. As opposed to Analogue Productions and just about anyone else in the reissue game, MOFI does a distinct, unique mastering for both vinyl and digital - in other words, as opposed to, say, AP - who run a feed from the mastering console to both the vinyl cutting head and the digital recorder simultaneously, MOFI remastering for vinyl is done separately, by (typically) a different person. So this is one of the rare cases where the vinyl will, and does, sound different from the digital. It is interesting to have both.