Mostly Other People Do The Killing

“Forty Fort”

(Hot Cup Records)

John Irabagon - Alto and tenor sax
Peter Evans - Trumpet
Kevin Shea - Drums and electronics
Moppa Elliott - Bass

Mostly Other People Do the Killing is a quartet founded on the idea that jazz should be more than a thoroughly contemporary music with a weight of tradition behind it, but that it can and should be enormous fun. They de-construct jazz standards and weave the remnants into new compositions that the quartet rips into with zest. Bandleader and principle songwriter Moppa Elliot, in addition to playing bass, also runs the label, Hot Cup, which issued the album. The Hot Cup website describes the group as a “bebop terrorist band”. This is their fourth CD. The cover of their last, “This Is Our Moosic”, parodied?well, guess which jazz classic, and “Forty Fort’s” cover continues the theme by spoofing the Roy Haynes Quartet’s “Out of the Afternoon”, a classic early ?60s Impulse! design, and in so doing they wear their spirit of respectful irreverence on their sleeves.

Anyone familiar with trumpeter Peter Evans solely from his recent, and superb double solo album for Emanem, 2008’s ultra-refined “Nature/Culture”, might be somewhat taken aback by the aggression he brings to the joyously organised mayhem of this disc. Those familiar with his own quartet, which likewise cannibalises the jazz cannon, will be less so. Evans, Elliott, and saxophonist John Irabagon all guested on “Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts”, a 2007 album by drummer Kevin Shea’s extraordinary Talibam!. “Ordination” was one of the freshest releases of its year, and “Forty Fort” shares the same anarchically democratic impulse.

“Forty Fort” positively fizzes with invention. Some have dismissed the humour and precociousness with which MOPDTK leaven the ionising and smash-and-grab eclecticism of their music, not least their tongue-in-cheek self aggrandisement, as mere smart impetuosity, but the quartet’s music is shot through with a sense of reverence for the precursors they riff on and quote from. They not only know the music inside out, but clearly they also love it; they don’t, however, treat it with pursed-lipped veneration. For my money, that makes a refreshing change.

The liner notes likewise send up a venerable jazz tradition with a dissection of the Haynes quartet’s sartorial choices and their poses for the “Out of the Afternoon” cover shot. The humour here rather labours the point. They should’ve substituted the press release, presumably penned by someone from their PR agency rather than liner-writer Elliot under the guise of Leonard Featherweight (see what he did there?). This (the press release) is both genuinely funny and surprisingly insightful, though I can’t vouch for the accuracy of its every detail. For example, my favourite “Forty Fort” track, “Blue Ball”, is described as “a bossa nova that quickly becomes micro-tonal and contains elements of Herb Alpert, A.C. Jobim, and game show theme songs”. In a typical MOPDTK progression, a raw solo by Irabagon pulls the others into its vortex before Evans subverts it to return the group to the preceding bossa nova groove. In such ways the music splices thrilling free playing into traditional stylings while always maintaining a rhythmic equilibrium. It’s actually hard to imagine anyone not finding something here to enjoy. New ideas may occasionally arrive a little too fast for some tastes, but they never pile up.

A coda to “Blue Ball” apparently quotes Sheena Easton’s Groove, but naturally that’s not something I can corroborate. All but one of the compositions that weave the multitude of references and quotations together is attributed to Moppa. Each takes the name of a place in his native Pennsylvania. The exception is the album sign-off, “Cute”, which was originally written by Neal Hefti for Count Basie. Given that Hefti also composed the ?60s TV Batman theme, his influence over MOTDTK comes as no surprise.

blog comments powered by Disqus