It's called the ‘Lost Septet’ because Davis never recorded formally in the studio with this band; this 2CD set was recorded midway through their October/November 1971 European Tour, on 5 November, at Wiener Konzerthaus in Vienna for Austrian radio broadcaster ORF. As a reference point, the last studio album he'd recorded by the time of the tour was Jack Johnson, which bears not the slightest relationship to this material. Miles was in good shape from his boxing, was drug-free and had just won the DownBeat and Playboy polls, and was enjoying life. His upcoming Columbia release was Live Evil which came out on the final day of the European tour on 20 November. At the time, the band had not moved into the electronic abstraction that would characterise this period of his career – Black Beauty, Live at Fillmore East, Dark Magus,Pangaea – and were signifying, albeit very freely, on previously recorded material: ‘Direction’, ‘Funky Tonk’, ‘What I Say’, ‘Sanctuary’, ‘It's About That Time’ and ‘Yesternow’.

Although Davis was saying he wanted to sound more like a rock band, there was no guitar, just Keith Jarrett on Rhodes. Like much of Davis' live electric music, it is good in parts, rather than the sustained focus of his acoustic work which was given shape by harmonic form. Even so, this is a valuable piece in the puzzle of how Davis' music from 1969-75 evolved prior to a drug-fuelled furlough from the music.