Stan Douglas: Luanda-Kinshasa, video, approx. 6 hours. Courtesy David Zwirner.
Stan Douglas’s show “Luanda-Kinshasa” imagines what might have been if Miles Davis had stuck with the experimental strain that marked his commercial flop On the Corner. Douglas’s video shows bandleader Jason Moran and a number of New York musicians playing at a painstakingly crafted re-creation of “The Church,” the famous Columbia Records studio where artists including Davis, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and Johnny Cash recorded albums. Stick around for 14 minutes or so and you’ll hear the two tracks the musicians perform, but know that six hours’ worth of material is generated by Douglas’s “recombinant” treatment, which allows different solos to play out over different basic tracks. The music is so good it hurts.