Bitches Brew is Miles Davis’ classic-rock album. Not in the sense that it has anything to do with rock on a musical level, really, but in the sense that this is the one Rolling Stone likes to gush over; this is the one Mojo and Classic Rock have written about; this is the one that got him inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. It’s got a hard, forceful backbeat, it’s got guitar, it’s got psychedelic production and tricky tape edits … it’s tailor-made for music dorks to dork out over.

And a lot of it’s great. The first two tracks, “Pharoah’s Dance” and “Bitches Brew,” are side-long journeys into a world of sound unlike anything that had existed before. The organic interactions between band members are subject to radical editing and reshaping by producer Teo Macero. On the album’s second disc, he’s less heavy-handed, letting pieces exist more or less as they were recorded (or creating the illusion that he’s doing that).

Davis brought a sizable company of players into the studio, including two keyboardists, two bassists (one upright, one electric), two drummers, two percussionists, plus a saxophonist, a bass clarinetist, and a guitarist (John McLaughlin, so important to the sound that one of the tracks is named after him). All these guys jam off each other in halfway guided improvisation, creating an ocean of sound of which, every once in a while, an individual instrument will bob to the surface for a time, before being reabsorbed into the whole.

Davis’ soloing is red-hot, full of bluesy smeared notes and screaming high runs; the “cool” for which he’d been known in the 1950s was long gone. Unfortunately, Wayne Shorter had mostly given up the tenor saxophone by this point, and was filling the air with the biting-on-foil sound of the soprano, but Bennie Maupin’s bass clarinet was a welcome addition. And the double bass idea was brilliant; the low end is filled to overflowing, but in a way that lets you hear Dave Holland (acoustic) and Harvey Brooks (electric) with perfect clarity. Similarly, the two drummers, Jack DeJohnette and Lenny White, keep everything driving forward, while still playing around with intricacy and subtlety, not unlike the Allman Brothers Band’s two drummers, Jai Johanny Johanson and Butch Trucks.

Bitches Brew takes a while to sink in; it’s imposing at first, with its 90-minute running time and dense sound. But eventually, real beauty emerges from the swirl, and like so many other albums on this list, it becomes the kind of thing you can listen to a thousand times and continually discover new details.