"Rubberband" is an album by legendary American jazz musician Miles Davis. Even though Davis recorded the album in 1985 and 1986, it wasn't released until 2019. The recording process initially started at Ameraycan Studios in Hollywood, with producers Randy Hall and Zane Giles. Davis, unhappy with his musical direction at Warner Bros, started the project as a radical departure from his previous works. The album was originally set to fuse funk and soul elements with his established jazz sensibilities in a more contemporary (1980s) way.
However, the project was put aside for a while and marked a turning point in Davis's career as he moved on to record "Tutu", leaving the "Rubberband" tracks unheard and untouched. The recordings were shelved by Warner Bros. in favor of "Tutu", which was more in keeping with the traditionalist direction jazz had taken in the late 80's.
The album got its life only after decades when Davis’s nephew, Vince Wilburn Jr., who had played the drums on the initial sessions for the album, decided to finish what they had begun. With the assistance of the original producers Hall and Giles, and Davis’s son, Erin, more than 30 years after it was abandoned, "Rubberband" was revived. It was finally edited, completed and emerged as an 11-track album, released by Rhino Records in 2019.
The album "Rubberband" isn't just a jazz record. It represents a period of Davis’s own shapeshifting habit. The sound drives the music into a different dimension, taking elements of different genres – funk, soul, and jazz, blending them into a lush and funky sound. It features recordings made by Davis himself, along with vocals from singers Ledisi and Lalah Hathaway. The album also includes cover art painted by Davis.
In the music world, "Rubberband" is seen as a "lost" album, which, when discovered, became the missing chapter in understanding the trajectory of Davis’s musical evolution from traditional jazz to his later genre-bending works. Moreover, the release gave fans new music and a chance to witness an undiscovered moment of artistic development of Miles Davis.
