Filles de Kilimanjaro - Reception

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
All About Jazz	(favorable)
Down Beat
Penguin Guide to Jazz
Rolling Stone	(favorable)
Rolling Stone Album Guide
Sputnikmusic
Uncut
Virgin Encyclopedia

Rolling Stone gave the album a positive review upon its release, stating "No amount of track-by-track description here can begin to convey the beauty and intensity. There are five songs, but really they fit together as five expressions of the same basic piece, one sustained work". In a retrospective review of the album, Uncut gave the album five out of five stars and called it "a masterpiece of tropical exoticism". Sputnikmusic staff writer Tyler Fisher commented that the rhythm section-players "sound entirely innovative and fresh" and "The whole band, in both quintets, has an extreme awareness about each other and knows exactly where each soloist is going". Fisher viewed that the album has "a more avant-garde feel" due to a "lack of form and the constant outlook of many measures ahead", while calling it "a full out enjoyable listen, showcasing enough variety and virtuosity to not make the 70-minute album a tiring listen". Allmusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine called its music "unpretentiously adventurous, grounded in driving, mildly funky rhythms and bluesy growls from Miles, graced with weird, colorful flourishes from the band Where Miles in the Sky meandered a bit, this is considerably more focused", dubbing it as "the swan song for his second classic quintet, arguably the finest collective of musicians he ever worked with". Erlewine also cited the album as "the beginning of a new phase for Miles, the place that he begins to dive headfirst into jazz-rock fusion", and commented on its significance in Davis's catalogue, stating:

hat makes this album so fascinating is that it's possible to hear the breaking point — though his quintet all followed him into fusion (three of his supporting players were on In a Silent Way), it's possible to hear them all break with the conventional notions of what constituted even adventurous jazz, turning into something new ertainly the music that would spring full bloom on In a Silent Way was still in the gestation phase, and despite the rock-blues-n-funk touches here, the music doesn't fly and search the way that Nefertiti did. But that's not a bad thing — this middle ground between the adventurous bop of the mid-'60s and the fusion of the late '60s is rewarding in its own right, since it's possible to hear great musicians find the foundation of a new form. —Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Down Beat critic John Ephland called it "the stylistic precursor to the ever-popular In a Silent Way of 1969", writing that "Filles is performed (and edited) like a suite, with a sense of flow unlike anything Davis had recorded up to that point. That flow is enhanced by a music played all in one key (F), with only five 'tunes,' and with a mood and rhythms that change gradually from start to finish". Ephland concluded in his review, "In passing, Filles de Kilimanjaro is a turning-point album unlike any other for Davis: For the first time, his bebop roots were essentially severed, rockier rhythms, electricity and ostinato-driven bass lines now holding sway". Jim Santella of All About Jazz wrote that the album's music "flows with a lyricism that remains highly regarded in today’s format", concluding in his review that "Filles De Kilimanjaro remains one of the classic albums from their collaboration, and represents a high point in modern jazz".