Miles Davis, The Complete On the Corner Sessions

This desirable box, with its metal spine and embossed Corky McCoy illustrations, looks and feels like a masterwork. The reality is more nerdishly completist: a collection of all Davis's studio sessions from 1972 until 1975, when he stopped performing for five years. So we get everything from On the Corner, most of Get Up With It and Ife from Big Fun, plus out-takes and unreleased oddities such as Mr Foster, Peace and Minnie (which anticipates his 80s pop phase), and some 7in singles. The actual On the Corner sessions were a steaming, abstract instrumental bouillabaisse, stirred by cellist/arranger Paul Buckmaster, and ladled out by producer Teo Macero. The mood shifted as Miles added more guitars and (his own) organ to make haunting masterpieces such as He Loved Him Madly. This futuristic music still defies analysis.