MTV was on constantly in Miles Davis’s Malibu home during the mid-1980s.

“He would turn the sound up when groups caught his eye,” Davis’s nephew Vince Wilburn Jr. , who was living with his uncle at the time and playing drums in his band, recalled in an interview. “It could be Mr. Mister, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, Prince, Toto.” In his career’s fifth and final act — one that has yet to be fully appreciated, even by his staunchest fans — Davis remained committed to the sounds of the day alongside the wriggling, kaleidoscopic style that had become his trademark.

Davis released “You’re Under Arrest” in 1985; it was his most directly pop-adjacent album, featuring songs by Jackson and Ms. Lauper. But critics savaged it, as they did most of his work in that era, and it contributed to strife between Davis and Columbia Records; he soon jumped ship for Warner Bros.

What happened next has scarcely been documented, even though it represents a significant turn in his career — and shows how restlessly he continued to alchemize history and the present, into his last years. In 1985 and early ’86, Davis quietly recorded a full album’s worth of music with Mr. Wilburn and a cast of other young musicians. The executives at Warner Bros. eventually demanded that Davis ditch the sessions entirely , but last week — after three years of restoration work by Mr. Wilburn and his original production team — “Rubberband,” an 11-track album from those sessions, was released.

It’s a potpourri of experiments, balancing the frayed energy and funky sparring of his 1970s fusion records with layers of synthesizer and protean harmonic movement.