Sexmob ‘The Hard Way’ (Corbett vs Dempsey)

Ya gotta change shit up, right? The NYC quartet has always had a fierce sound – its blend of slide trumpet, saxophone, bass, and drums is built on a sassy oomph that never blinks. Sure, they appreciate nuances just as much as any improvising quartet should, but they’re always ready to put some punch into a flourish and kick some ass with an anthem (grab some headphones and check their operatic spin on “Ruby Tuesday”). Their 10th album is about transition, however; it finds ‘em moving from their tried-and-true acoustic approach to cagey digi-matic maneuvers that are tweaked to form a rambunctious terrain. The vibe is 2025 if not 2029: there’s something cranky, cool, and cosmopolitan about the whole thing, like the soundtrack to a long stroll down down the Champs-Élysées if it felt like 14th Street and smelled like the Bowery.      

The Hard Way was produced by Scott Harding, a longstanding band ally who sculpted their sonics previously but is crucial enough to this record’s personality to be deemed a fifth Mobster. In his hands, Kenny Wollesen’s drums get a robotics lesson, the horns of Briggan Krauss and Steven Bernstein are plied with fuzzy filters, and that groove machine wielded by bassist Tony Scherr comes off like Aphex Twin put James Jamerson on his payroll – psychedelic with a futuristic flava. From the chopped and screwed hijinks of “Fletcher Henderson,” to the dubby prayer of “Dominion,” the band finds several ways to connect the dots between abstraction and melody, earnestness and nonchalance, spontaneity and design. A couple guests drop by. Vijay Iyer adds spooky keybs to “You Can Take a Myth” and John Medeski’s B-3 gets ultra saucy on “Banacek” (which conjures visions of George Peppard’s dapper turtleneck). But added instruments don’t really matter; Bernstein’s brass and Krauss’ alto are at the center of the action, and Harding’s finger is always on the climate control knob. Because the band has heart to spare, his mildly aggro atmosphere seldom sounds harsh. And just because they’re messing with beats, don’t think Sexmob has abandoned the tradition they’ve been gleefully giving a hot foot since their late ‘90s romps at NYC’s Knitting Factory. The final snatch of melody heard as the record fades away is “Sunny Side of the Street.”

TONE Audio

Corbett vs Dempsey

Must-See Three: Jazz In NYC This Week

hey! i’m on vacation this week, but here are some short blabs that should nudge you to check out the artists mentioned.

Sexmob Fotografiska Tuesday, May 30

I dig the mix of organic and digi-matic maneuvers that form the rambunctious atmosphere of the quartet’s new album, The Hard Way (Corbett vs Dempsy). Wollesen’s drums get a robotics lesson, the horns of Krauss and Bernstein are plied with fuzzy filters, and that groove machine wielded by Mr Scherr comes off like Aphex Twin put James Jamerson on the payroll. Psychedelic sass with a 2029 flava. It’s because the esteemed quartet gave their go-to producer Scott Harding the okey-doke to light this shit up. Improvs amble, crescendos erupt. There’s something cosmopolitan about the whole thing, like a long stroll down the Champs-Élysées (if it smelled like the Bowery).

Aruán Ortiz Shift Sunday, June 4

I remember spending quality time with the pianist’s Cub(an)ism when it hit six years ago. A marvel of rumination, and a lesson in turning fleeting phrases into self-sufficient statements, it seemed to be an offspring of Anthony Davis’ Lady Of The Mirrors. Ortiz digs pulse, and the repeated patterns he occasionally chooses to nurture have an impact all their own. His new trio album Serranías: Sketchbook for Piano Trio seems near orchestral in comparison. But I bet there’s a thick locomotion to this Williamsburg solo gig.

Audible Spirits (Matt Moran/Sarah Elizabeth Charles/Curtis Hasselbring) The Owl Music Parlor Saturday, June 3

Took a stroll with the poetic vibraphonist and he s’plained me some background regarding the artistic use of the Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Long recordings that fleck but don’t define this thoughtful experiment with repertory, calling the act of performance a “fulcrum” between past and future. There’s a thoughtful balance of both in the Spirits’ program, which messes with the baubles of the classic canon to consider what would happen if the girl from Ipanema was misty enough to ask about all the things you are in a stolen moment’s notice like someone in love. Moran/Charles/Hasselbring genuflect to a surrealism that likes to live in the shadows, or as they say, subscribe to a “manifesto on historical lineage and individual creativity in a hall of mirrors.” The new album is part of a three-title release campaign on the Diskonife label, and the other artists are part of this celebratory PHLG hit as well. Do check out Darren Johnston’s Wild Awake and Rossi/Hess/Moran’s You Break You Buy. And yes, they all sport album art by Reuben Radding.

Watch Them Explain

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/81060109/stream?client_id=3cQaPshpEeLqMsNFAUw1Q?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio

SEXMOB
CINEMA, CIRCUS & SPAGHETTI (SEXMOB PLAYS FELLINI: THE MUSIC OF NINO ROTA)

Available March 19 from The Royal Potato Family

Sexmob has announced the release of Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti (Sexmob Plays Fellini: The Music of Nino Rota), due March 19 from The Royal Potato Family. The recording is their first new studio album since the Grammy Award-nominated Sexotica seven years ago. A venerable New York City music institution, Sexmob turned 17 this year. The band’s four founding members—Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss, Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen—defy genre, instead replacing it with their own inimitable musical language.

“The whole thing about the music we make is that it comes from this tradition, but at the same time we don’t really care about this idea of playing traditional or nontraditional music. The most important part is to have your own sound,” says Steven Bernstein, Sexmob’s charismatic leader and slide trumpeter. “You have to be unflinching. We’re not doing this to get rich or famous or trying to force the issue. We’re doing this because we all love Sexmob.”

It’s fitting then that for Sexmob’s return to the LP format that they would choose to re-imagine the music of Nino Rota. It was Rota’s imaginative compositions that set the tone for the surrealist films of the legendary Italian director Federico Fellini. The filmmaker once said, “My films, like my life, are summed up in circus, spaghetti, sex, and cinema.” Thus accordingly, Sexmob calls the 12-track effort, Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti (Sexmob Plays Fellini: The Music Of Nino Rota).

“Seeing the films was my first exposure to this music. I grew up in Berkeley, and we always had art-movie houses, so we’d go see Fellini films. It’s not like I was a huge Fellini fan, but it was just part of being a high-school kid,” explains Bernstein. “But then what happened is I was 19 years old and I went to my friend’s house, and he said, ‘Check out this record!’ It was Hal Willner’s Nino Rota tribute, and I was like, ‘Wow! Look who’s on it?’ And it’s Carla Bley, Steve Lacy, Jaki Byard. It’s Bill Frisell’s first recording. It’s Wynton Marsalis’ first recording. And then Blondie’s on it. Not the full band, but Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. And both of us were just getting our minds blown. We’re like, ‘Wow! What is this? Who is this guy?’And of course the music was super memorable, and the very idea was just so unbelievable and audacious and cool. It was what we’d all been waiting for.”

With that kind of inspiration as the wind at their backs, these giants of the NYC downtown scene, genre notwithstanding, tracked the majority of the album in one afternoon at Brooklyn Recording in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Diving headlong into Rota’s iconic Fellini film melodies, Sexmob fearlessly explodes all musical parameters, steering the arrangements through gutbucket swing and igniting them with New Orleans brass band fervor; dubbing them out into ether and blasting them with punk jazz abandon. Rota’s classic themes are the perfect foil for Sexmob’s improvisational psychedelia, old world beauty and hypnotic rhythms.

“These themes are so strong, I figured if we added that Sexmob thing to it, how could we go wrong,” concludes Bernstein. “Our fans are, in general, music heads. That’s one of the things about Sexmob, since the beginning, it’s always been about getting all those people who aren’t necessarily jazz fans to go, ‘Oh wow! I like this,’ because we just set out to play good music.”

Big Band Blowout, Brooklyn Style

The Search and Restore team recently garnered mucho acclaim by raising $75K in funds to hot-wire a 2011 initiative that finds them filming lots and lots of jazz shows. Hats off to Adam Schatz and company. Tonight they pop the metaphorical bubbly with a big band hootenanny at Littlefield – which we expect to be filmed, of course. Three key large ensembles – Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, and Fight The Big Bull carve out some time to explain just how wide a scope the big band lingo has these days. MTO are interpreting Sly Stone; the Virginia Bulls have a way with tunes by The Band; and the Secret Society is celebrated for folding chunks of the rock vernacular into its elaborate mix.

I, Jukebox

Eric Reed, The Dancing Monk (Savant)

Ambrose Akinmusire, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)

Tokyo Police Club, Champ (Mom & Pop)

Nicki Minaj, Pink Friday (Cash Money)

Warpaint, The Fool (Rough Trade)

The Spampinato Brothers, Pie In the Sky (Revolvo)

Gutbucket, Flock (Cuneiform)

Michael Blake, Hellbent (Blake)

William Parker, I Plan To Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield (AUM Fidelity)

Big Balls In Cow Town

Spending time reviewing Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra‘s We Are MTO (Sunnyside) made me realize I hadn’t played enough Bob Wills of late. There’s a sweet spin on “Makes No Difference Now” on Bernstein’s disc. Then, out of the blue, someone sent over this clip of Tommy Duncan rolling through his blues. Check the Joe Maphis solo and grab The Tiffany Transcriptions for a nice blast of Wills.

We Are MTO review (from DownBeat) after the jump.