In the beginning ...

Miles Davis. To my mind the coolest motherfucker ever to walk the earth.

Let me begin to explain ..

My old man was a jazz fanatic. He had the most music out of anyone I knew as a child. Our familyroom was chock full of records, and the study was rammed with tapes and books about music. He loved it all, but Miles was his favourite.

12 years younger than her husband, my mother's music choice effectively ceased from the moment they were married. From then on it was all jazz, all the time. I got the same deal from birth. I suppose I was born into the family, the music, and Miles. As soon as I could talk my father would offer me money if I could "pick the song playing", or "name the trumpet player" ... with my mother remonstrating in the background. And so my musical education began.

On a family holiday at age eight he had me swimming 25 laps a day in an Indonesian hotel pool in exchange for cassette tapes of my choice from the local bootleg shops. I returned home with two Stevie Wonder compilations and Michael Jackson's Bad, but my dad also stuck in a couple of newer Miles Davis joints, including You're Under Arrest (1985).

By that stage Miles was long past making 'jazz'. Track two of You're Under Arrest was a passable cover version of Michael Jackson's Human Nature, and I would play along on my violin. Over and over. Rewind and repeat. When I heard new jack swing trio SWV's Right Here (Human Nature Mix) on the radio a few years later it probably clicked as 'that Miles song' long before it did as a Michael Jackson one like everyone else.

Human Nature at track two was in the 'safe zone' of the album, as the rest of it used to scare the shit out of me. Opening track One Phone Call-Street Sounds began with a guy snorting cocaine before being arrested, all over a heavy porn funk groove and police siren synths. Popstar Sting makes an odd cameo to read the suspect his rights in French. The album concluded with Medley, and the sounds of babies crying, a clocktower chiming, helicopters, bombs, and general panic, with Miles' trumpet wafting over keys straight out of a creepy daytime movie. I would of course often wake to this final track in the middle of the night in a cold sweat just before the tape ran out.

Although the album wasn't particularly good, the vibe stuck with me. It was my first taste of music being able to make you feel unsettled, uncomfortable.

While those tracks don't have quite that same effect on me these days I can somewhat recreate that feeling listening to Carl Craig in his Innerzone Orchestra guise. His album Programmed is on the b-side of a homemade Carl Craig tape I sometimes play at bedtime. Both the title track and Eruption from that album are genuinely unsettling, and if I wake to them in the night they still catch me off guard in the same way You're Under Arrest did all those years ago as a kid.

.. and as for french producer Jean-Pierre Massiera's 1968 psych scream number Kriminal (performed as Les Maledictus Sound), let's just say you wouldn't catch me for dead listening to this after bedtime.


Tracks:
Miles Davis - Human Nature

SWV - Right Here (Human Nature Mix)

Miles Davis - One Phone Call-Street Scenes (feat. Sting)
Miles Davis - Medley: Jean Pierre-You're Under Arrest-Then There Were None

Les Maledictus Sound - Kriminal

Album
Innerzone Orchestra - Programmed