After experimenting with different line-ups, he established a stable live band in 1973 and toured constantly for the next two years, despite physical pain from worsening health and emotional instability brought on by substance abuse.

The evolving nature of the performance led to the widespread misunderstanding that it had no compositional basis, while its dark, angry, and somber musical qualities were seen as a reflection of the bandleader's emotional and spiritual state at the time.

Davis enlisted Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo to design its artwork, which depicted the cityscape of an advanced civilization with elements inspired by Eastern subterranean myths, Afrofuturism, and ufology.

It was reevaluated positively in subsequent years, however, as a generation of younger musicians was influenced by the band's abrasive music and cathartic playing, particularly Cosey's effects-laden free improvisations.

[2] The trumpeter attracted younger audiences as his fusion music became more radical and abstract while alienating older listeners, musicians, and critics in the jazz scene who accused him of selling out.

[9] To numb the pain, he became increasingly dependent on self-medicating with painkillers, cocaine, and morphine, which combined with his alcohol and recreational drug use led to mood swings; he would by turns feel vulnerable and hostile.

[14] Japanese critic Keizo Takada said at the time that Davis is leading his "magnificent and energetic" band just as Duke Ellington had his orchestra: "Miles must be the genius of managing men and bringing out their hidden talent.

[22] Lucas explained that the band started each performance with a "very defined compositional basis" before developing it further in a highly structured yet "very free way"; the "Right Off" segment, for instance, was improvised from the original recording's E-flat riff.

"[29] Categorizing Agharta as a jazz-rock record, Simon Reynolds wrote in The Wire that the music "offered a drastic intensification of rock's three most radical aspects: space, timbre, and groove".

According to Greg Tate, the septet created "a pan-ethnic web of avant-garde music", while Sputnikmusic's Hernan M. Campbell said they explored "progressive ambiences" particularly within the record's second half; Phil Alexander from Mojo characterized Agharta as "both ambient yet thrashing, melodic yet coruscating", and suggestive of Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic experiments.

[32] These stops served as dramatic turning points in the tension-release structure of the performances, changing their tempo and allowing the band to alternate between quiet passages and intense climaxes.

[38] Onstage, Cosey also had a table set up holding a mbira, claves, agogo bells, and several other hand percussion instruments, which he played or struck with a mallet to indicate a different break or stop.

[51] The pedal created what The Penguin Guide to Jazz (2006) described as "surges and ebbs in a harmonically static line, allowing Miles to build huge melismatic variations on a single note".

"[54] According to Richard Cook, Davis' final trumpet passage from the "Wili (= For Dave)" segment typified a "sense of gloom, even exhaustion", that colored many interpretations of Agharta's "dark" music.

[57] The myth depicted the city as a divine source of power, claiming that its inhabitants were highly spiritual, advanced beings who would save the Earth from materialism and destructive technology after a cataclysmic event.

[58] It was first conceived by 19th-century French thinker Louis Jacolliot as a land ruled by an Ethiopian ruler; Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre later described it as "drowning in celestial radiances all visible distinctions of race in a single chromatic of light and sound, singularly removed from the usual notions of perspective and acoustics.

[65] According to graphic designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, Yokoo depicted groups of jellyfish, coral reefs, and brightly colored fish to suggest an association between Agharta and Atlantis.

[71] The Stranger's Dave Segal claims it was one of the most divisive records ever, challenging both critics and the artist's core audience much in the same way Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music album had in 1975.

[81] Reviewing for The New York Times in April 1976, Robert Palmer said Agharta is marred by long stretches of "sloppy, one-chord jams", disjointed sounds, and a banal quality clearly rendered by the impeccable Japanese engineering.

He complained that Davis' use of the wah-wah pedal inhibits his ability to phrase notes and that the septet sounds poor "by rock standards", particularly Cosey, whose overamplified guitar "whines and rumbles like a noisy machine shop" and relegates Lucas to background riffs.

[83] Gary Giddins penned an angrily dismissive review of Agharta in The Village Voice, in which he charged Davis with failing to assert his musical presence on what he said is not "just a bad record" but also "a sad one".

[86] In DownBeat, Gilmore said the band sounds best on the breakneck segments opening each of the two discs, where Cosey's ferocious improvisations "achieve a staggering emotional dimension" lacking on the slower passages, which he felt are still redeemed by Davis' elegiac trumpet playing.

[71][nb 3] Reflecting on the trumpeter's 1970s concert recordings in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (1992), J. D. Considine contended that Agharta's "alternately audacious, poetic, hypnotic, and abrasive" music had endured the passage of time best.

While possessing an "epic" sound and scope, Agharta is also "a great band record", in his opinion: "Even though Davis contributed only telling details, he still cued exceptional performances from his men.

He said that, because Davis gave the band leeway for constant interplay, the music exhibits an "organic and fluid quality" as well as a greater variety of textures, rhythms, timbres, and moods than Dark Magus.

"[27] Back in the mid-1970s, fans who had formed emotional attachments to the moody soundscapes of Filles de Kilimanjaro and In a Silent Way had trouble adjusting to the electronic firestorms of Agharta.

Despite being one of Davis' lesser-known records, Agharta belonged to a period in his career that influenced artists in British jazz, new wave, and punk rock, including guitarists Robert Quine and Tom Verlaine.

[44] Jazz critic Bill Milkowski credited his excursive style for "spawning an entire school of 'sick' guitar playing" and said the combination of Fortune's acerbic sax lines atop Foster, Henderson, and Lucas' syncopated grooves were 10 years ahead of Steve Coleman and Greg Osby's M-Base experiments.

[110] Tingen found Cosey's solos amazingly revealing and advanced when heard decades later: "Sometimes growling, scurrying around all corners like a caged tiger, sometimes soaring like a bird, sometimes deliriously abstract, sometimes elegantly melodic and tender, his electric guitar concept is one of the most original to have been devised on the instrument.

[113] It became one of the favorite albums for English musician Richard H. Kirk, who recalled playing it often while working at Chris Watson's loft during their early years in the band Cabaret Voltaire.