Slippery Rock! (Hot Cup Records)
Mostly Other People Do the Killing
Released January 22, 2013
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2013
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About:
Claiming to have been inspired by smooth jazz, the 5th MOPDTK album is a remarkable achievement of forward-thinking free jazz with a bizarre sense of humor and an irresistible love of poking fun at form while simultaneously paying homage. Liner notes by “Leonardo Featherweight”. You get the idea. Absolutely killer, remarkable playing, certainly the hottest jazz group in NYC for the new millenium.
“Mostly Other People Do the Killing formed in the fall of 2003 in New York City. Bassist and bandleader, Moppa Elliott met trumpeter Peter Evans in the fall of 1998 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where both studied. While at Oberlin, Elliott and Evans performed together in a series of ensembles many of which were important precursors to MOPDtK. Upon relocating to New York, Elliott met saxophonist Jon Irabagon after joining Jon Lundbom’s Big V Chord. The initial drummer in MOPDtK was Vincent Sperrazza who participated in the rehearsals leading up to the quartet’s first gig, November 25. Sperrazza was unable to make the gig, and his last minute replacement was Kevin Shea who had met Elliott through Mary Halvorson. The performance, at a L.E.S. series curated by Will Connell at Niagra, included a solo by Shea in which he removed his shirt and whipped his drums with it. The perfect drummer had been discovered!
Initially, the repertoire of MOPDtK included both originals by Elliott, Evans and Irabagon, and jazz standards such as “Skippy,” “Moanin'” and “A Night in Tunisia.” All of Elliott’s compositions are always named after towns in Pennsylvania which gives his titles both conceptual distance from the musical material and an amusing back-story. The band slowly began to transform from a free-improvising jazz band, to an ensemble that deconstructed both jazz standards and Elliott’s compositions, weaving in and out of styles erratically and often humorously.”
Hot Cup
Track Listing:
1. Hearts Content (Moppa Elliott) 06:25
2. Can’t Tell Shipp from Shohola (Moppa Elliott) 06:00
3. Sayre (Moppa Elliott) 07:06
4. President Polk (Moppa Elliott) 04:36
5. Yo, Yeo, Yough (Moppa Elliott) 04:41
6. Dexter, Wayne And Mobley (Moppa Elliott) 05:27
7. Jersey Shore (Moppa Elliott) 05:49
8. Paul’s Journey to Opp (Moppa Elliott) 03:34
9. Is Granny Spry? (Moppa Elliott) 08:55
Personnel:
Peter Evans: trumpet, piccolo trumpet
Jon Irabagon: alto saxophone, sopranino saxophone
Moppa Elliott: double bass
Kevin Shea: drums
Recorded April 9 – 10, 2012, at Oktaven Audio
Producer: Moppa Elliott
Engineered and Mixed by Ryan Streber
Mastered by Seth Foster
Artwork: Nathan Kuruna
Review:
Mostly Other Peopele Do the Killing is back! And with it the rightly slandered genre of smooth jazz. This quintet’s fifth studio album was penned by MOPDtK bassist Moppa Elliott after a lengthy immersion in the smooth jazz recordings of the late 1970s and ’80s. Elliott extracted certain idiomatic phrases, harmonies and embellishments from this superficial and commercial style, incorporated into his own compositions and used all the quartet members’ encyclopedic knowledge to shed new light on this often maligned sub-genre.
Fortunately, Elliot and the other virtuoso co-conspirators of MOPDtK— trumpeter Peter Evans, saxophonist Jon Irabagon and drummer Kevin Shea—never surrender to smooth jazz clichés or conventions, except for the shocking colors of their suits, captured on the sleeve photos. The group capitalizes on almost a decade as a working band, enjoys breaking down structural elements, sudden changes in tempo, feel and meter, and sneaking in some surprising references, this time ranging from composer Joseph Haydn to minimalist icon Philip Glass.
As on its previous studio albums, MOPDtK opens with a drum solo over a vamp on “Hearts Content,” later turned into a fiery call-and-response between the two horns. On this composition already MOPDtK signal that it is about to trash any known Kenny G clichés and expand the vocabulary of the genre to unimaginable territories. The composition titles are still inspired by the funny names of towns in Pennsylvania, as “Sayre,” that was founded by relatives of Elliot, a compositions based loosely on transparent compositional conventions of smooth jazz, but the quartet’s tight, often chaotic interplay avoids of turning these conventions into a caricature.
Other compositions are kind of left-of-center tributes. “President Polk” draws inspiration from R &B artists like Prince and R. Kelly, but mutate the idiomatic use of extreme high registers to connote emotionality in this genre with inventive and playful solos from Evans, on piccolo trumpet, and Irabagon, on sopranino sax. The energetic, Lenny Pickett-inspired “Yo, Yeo, Yough” features solos from everyone in the quartet, while “Dexter, Wayne and Mobley”—obviously another tribute to great saxophonists Dexter Gordon, Wayne Shorter and Hank Mobley—is but a platform to express Evans and Irabagon’s innovative language and extended techniques.
MOPDtK even mange to root “Paul’s Journey to Opp” in a muscular, swinging four-bar vamp, rare in its repertoire—or, for that matter, in smooth jazz. Elliot’s schizophrenic compositional style is emphasized on “Is Granny Spry?,” jumping from a typical smooth jazz vamp to Evans’ clever quotes from Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, spiced with Irabagon’s nervous sax squawks.
This wild and playful reinvention of the often dismissed genre of smooth jazz takes its clichés to another level. But more important it establishes MOPDtK as one of the most original and resourceful bands of our day.
Eyal Hareuveni (All About Jazz)
