Filles De Kilimanjaro is a transitional record. An artist like Miles Davis, constantly changing the terms of his art, is bound to wind up with a lot of weird in-between albums in their discography, and this is one of the most awkward. The Second Great Quintet was coming apart — pianist Herbie Hancock and bassist Ron Carter were on the way out, being replaced by Chick Corea and Dave Holland respectively. So on the first and second-to-last tracks, “Frelon Brun” and “Mademoiselle Mabry” (named for Betty Mabry, the woman seen on the album cover, who would become the second Mrs. Miles Davis that same year and launch a solo career in 1973), the band is Davis, Shorter, Corea, Holland and Williams, while on the middle three (“Tout De Suite,” “Petits Machins,” and the title track), the classic quintet is heard, though Hancock is playing electric, rather than acoustic piano.

There’s a lot of great playing on Filles De Kilimanjaro, obviously. But like Miles in the Sky, the album feels slightly adrift, like nobody involved had quite figured out where they were going before Davis whispered, “OK, let’s go.” It’s got aggression, particularly from Tony Williams, who was already moving in the jazz-rock direction he’d pursue with his own Lifetime band beginning in 1969, and Wayne Shorter, whose phrases are as sharp as getting a metal splinter under your thumbnail. But the electric piano isn’t as well suited to this kind of abstract, sliced-and-diced music as its acoustic equivalent, and the music atomizes and floats away, becoming the worst thing of all — unmemorable.