Mostly Other People Do the Killing's trio album 'Disasters Vol. 1' (February 18, 2022 on Hot Cup Records)

Moppa Elliott’s Mostly Other People Do the Killing Presents Disasters Vol. 1

Trio album available February 18, 2022 on Hot Cup Records

DownBeat Critics Poll Winners: Rising Star Ensemble

El Intruso Best Band to See Live

El Intruso Jazz Group of the Year 

“With each album, [MOPDtK’s] reach gets deeper and more convincing.”

– Mike Shanley, JazzTimes 

“The group that has always straddled the broad and fuzzy line between tradition and chaotic improvisation, has nevertheless managed that process with a mixture of sophistication, revelation and unbridled enthusiasm.”

– Karl Ackermann, All About Jazz 

Featuring: Ron Stabinsky (Jazz Journalists Association Best Debut Album, Free For One), Moppa Elliott (DownBeat Critics Poll Rising Star Bassist, Composer, Arranger), Kevin Shea (Best Drummer, Village Voice)

Hot Cup Records is proud to present Disasters Vol. 1, the second release by the piano trio configuration of Mostly Other People Do the Killing. Disasters Vol. 1 features eight new compositions by bassist/composer Moppa Elliott written in the fall of 2019, just before the pandemic struck. Each composition on the album is named after a small town in Pennsylvania that experienced  disasters ranging from floods and fires to mining accidents. These disasters are cautionary tales, potent metaphors, and excellent examples of how people measure risk and reward.

Elliott’s compositions, as performed by the MOPDtK trio including pianist Ron Stabinsky and drummer Kevin Shea, are deliberately simple so that they can be spontaneously taken apart and reassembled, a hallmark of MOPDtK dating back to the band’s inception in 2003. The melodic material is often blues-based and firmly rooted in the Jazz tradition unlike much of the electronic orchestration, improvised transitions, and non sequiturs that frequently derail the written composition. The opening track “Three Mile Island,” for example, is a bugaloo, a form that serves as the lynchpin or opening number of so many classic jazz albums. Beginning with dense improvised material, the composition slowly takes shape around a bass line and harmonic progression before the recording concludes with the full statement of the theme.  

MOPDtK’s frequent collaborator, Leonardo Featherweight, has penned liner notes explaining the connection between each song’s title and the music it inspired. True to form, he often deliberately misses the point, yet accidentally reveals important points. While each piece was written with the town and its specific disaster in mind, also focused on disasters as metaphors for the conflicts we encounter every day as we navigate the joys and sorrows of our social, romantic, and familial obligations. Ultimately, the origins and inspiration behind each piece are less important than the recorded performance and interaction between the musicians in real time.

After the release of Paint, the first MOPDtK album in the piano trio format, Elliott recorded three albums of his compositions for three different ensembles. JazzBand/RockBand/DanceBand featured his straight-ahead jazz quintet Advancing on a Wild Pitch, his rock band Unspeakable Garbage (which performed at the Heineken Jazz Festival in San Sebastian, Spain), and his dance band Acceleration Due to Gravity featuring his long-time friends and collaborators Mike Pride and George Burton. The range of styles included on this album solidified Elliott’s reputation as one of the great composers working today.

Over the past sixteen years, MOPDtK, led by bassist/composer Moppa Elliott, has earned a place at the forefront of jazz and improvised music, performing in a style that is at once rooted in the jazz tradition and highly improvised and unstructured. Billed as a “Bebop Terrorist Band,” their music melds history and tradition with cutting-edge vibrancy and the underlying imperative that jazz is alive and well, and most of all, fun. Their initial albums explored the intersection between common practice hard bop compositions and free improvisation, incorporating a kaleidoscopic wealth of other influences from pop music to the classical European repertoire. In 2010, Elliott expanded the group’s framework and began exploring specific eras of jazz, resulting in 2011’s Slippery Rock (an investigation of smooth jazz and fusion styles) and 2012’s Red Hot (featuring an expanded lineup recalling the jazz and blues recordings of the late 1920s and early 1930s). 

2014 saw the release of Blue, a note-for-note recreation of Miles Davis’ classic album, Kind of Blue that evoked a wide range of strong responses from both the public and critics and will likely be a part of the discussion of the state of jazz in the 21st century for years to come. In 2015, the band returned to a quartet format for the album Mauch Chunk, which explored the hard bop styles common in the 1950s. Since the release of Mauch Chunk, all four members of the core quartet have released solo recordings including Moppa Elliott’s Still, Up In the Air, and pianist Ron Stabinsky’s Free For One, both on Hot Cup Records. In February 2017 MOPDtK the band released the septet album Loafer’s Hollow to wide critical acclaim.

Pianist Ron Stabinsky is a member of the legendary indie-rock band The Meat Puppets, Peter Evans’ Quartet and Quintet, Charles Evans Quartet (no relation), and in 2016 recorded his first solo album Free For One on Hot Cup Records.

Kevin Shea was named “Best Drummer in New York” by the Village Voice and regularly tours with the noise-rock-improv duo, Talibam! Talibam! was named the “Artists in Residence” at the Moers Festival in Moers, Germany for all of 2021 and have spent the year collaborating with a wide variety of artists from around the world.

Bassist Moppa Elliott teaches music at Information Technology High School in Long Island City, NY.  He also produces and releases albums on Hot Cup Records including his solo bass recording Still, Up in the Air and a three-album release entitled JazzBand/RockBand/DanceBand.

Mostly Other People Do the Killing – Tour Dates

• Saturday, February 19, 7:30 p.m. at Community Music School of Springfield, 127 State St., Springfield, MA. Presented by Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares. Tickets $15. For information visit www.jazzshares.org.

• Sunday, February 20, 6 p.m. at The Cooperage Project, 1030 Main St., Honesdale, PA. Tickets $20, $15 advance. For information call 570-253-2020 or visit https://thecooperageproject.org/event/mostly-other-people-do-the-killing-2/.

• Monday, February 21, 8 p.m. at Bop Shop Records, 1460 Monroe Avenue, Rochester, NY. Tickets $20. For information call 585-271-3354 or visit https://www.bopshop.com/events/mostly-other-people-do-the-killing.

• Wednesday, February 23, 7 p.m. at City of Asylum, 40 W. North Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA. Live or livestream tickets free. For information call 412-435-1110 or visit https://cityofasylum.org/event/diasaters-vol-1-album-release/.

• Thursday, February 24, 7 p.m. at The Bop Stop, 2920 Detroit Avenue, 

Cleveland, OH. Live performance tickets $15; livestream free, donations 

encouraged. Livestream at https://www.facebook.com/bopstop/live. For information call 216-771-6551 or visit https://www.themusicsettlement.org/events/2022/02/24/mostly-other-people-do-the-killing-bop-stop.

• Friday, February 25, 7 p.m. at Rhizome, 1950 Maple St. NW, Washington, DC. Tickets $10-$20. For information visit https://www.rhizomedc.org/new-events/2022/2/25/mopdtkzara. 

Hot Cup Records

Braithwaite & Katz · Three Mile Island - Mostly Other People Do the Killing

Talibam! - Hard Vibe (ESP - DISK' 2018)

Talibam! delights in creating music that cannot be pinned down within the safe-spaces of existing genres. With each new album, Talibam! reinvents their methodological palette in order to bolster a fresh clarity of joyous auditory surprise, something their fans have come to depend on. Talibam! focuses on compositional clarity, with reverence for their diverse interest in genre. On this new album they push the pulse of Motorik rhythm through a Psychedelic Jazz filter. This time out, they have created a sonic edifice so radical, so intricate in its density, that additional hands were required to bring it to life; thus was born the Talibam! Hard Vibe Band with Matt Nelson (Battle Trance, tUnE-yArDs) and Ron Stabinsky (Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Peter Evans Quintet, Relâche) joining Mottel (CSC Funk Band, Alien Whale, Nymph,   Platinum Vision) and Village Voice "Best Drummer in New York" Shea (Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Rhys Chatham, People featuring Mary Halvorson).

The scientists in the Talibam! laboratory describe the results thusly: The HARD VIBE composition transforms aspects of rhythm changes into a disciplined sequence of minor key modulations to create a rigorous Hard Vibe obstacle course for the soloists over a tight melodic/rhythmic grid. Inspired by Herbie Hancock's '70s cosmic music, long-form repetitive works such as Miles Davis's On the Corner, Charlie Parker's "Salt Peanuts," Tenor Sax endurance soloists, Albert Ayler's New Grass, the legendary organ brutality of Larry Young, and the NYC Avant-Garde Rock Minimalism of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, Hard Vibe maintains an infectious pulse with virtuosic structural jazz improvisation. The Jan Hammer/'80s soundtrack-inspired Keytar payoff (second half of side B) brings festival audiences to its feet in epic dance and ripping solo proportions. But those are inspirations more than ingredients. As we at ESP-Disk' are fond of saying, "You never heard such sounds in your life."

"Talibam! manage to cast themselves as a powerful rhythm section... It's pretty cool to hear the Manhattan abstracters create such a cool free jazz/free rock hybrid." - Byron Coley

"Co-conspirators Matthew Mottel and Kevin Shea have something in common with John Coxon and Ashley Wales of Spring Heel Jack in their application of multiple instruments, electronics and collaborators to create an eclectic musical milieu." - Derek Taylor

"This is wildly new music, fresh in its approach to the collision of melody, harmony and rhythm that makes for quite a soup for the songs to swim in." - Raul d'Gama Rose

"Amid the fun and exuberance a clever brain and a strong heart of integrity beats." - Lisa Thatcher

01. Infinite Hard Vibe Pt. 1 19:44

02. Infinite Hard Vibe Pt. 2 19:21

Matthew Mottel: Fender Rhodes, synthesizer

Matt Nelson: tenor saxophone

Kevin Shea: drums

Ron Stabinsky: Hammond B3 organ

John Olson (Wolf Eyes): cover art

Talibam! - Hard Vibe (2017)

HARD VIBE is a new cosmic-modular jazz quartet based in New York City featuring saxophonist Matt Nelson, pianist Ron Stabinsky, keyboardist Matthew Mottel, and drummer Kevin Shea. 

Inspired by Herbie Hancock's '70's space-music and long-form repetitive works like Miles Davis’ On The Corner, Hard Vibe has a trans-minimalist compositional impetus with an atypical array of structural obstructions. Specifically, Hard Vibe force-fuses a hard-boiled chordal pattern from rhythm changes into an all-inclusive oasis of contextual amelioration. This is pragmatically achieved by transforming a major-key cadence into a sadistic pre-determined grid of unremitting minor modulations…a task adroitly executed on B3 by Stabinsky. 

Simultaneously, the fantastical foundation of Mottel’s 80’s-jazz-era melodic phrase, paired with Shea’s strict 16th-note rhythmic concept, propels Nelson’s inexhaustible sax solo into a increasingly ecstatic state of tantric epiphany. Hard Vibe obediently maintains it’s infectious pulse throughout and ultimately culminates as a joyous synth-infused Prince tribute cum Keytar payoff à la Jan Hammer. 

Other influences for Hard Vibe include Charlie Parker's concrete melodic vision within Salt Peanuts, the NYC Avantgarde Minimalism of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, Tenor Sax endurance soloists like Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler's funky New Grass, and the epic organ brutality of Larry Young.

HARD VIBE marks Talibam!’s return to the legendary ESP-Disk’ record label, a partnership begun in 2009 with the release of the highly acclaimed Boogie In The Breeze Blocks album. Also on September 8 2017, Talibam! is thrilled to announce ESP-Disk’ will also be releasing their new soundtrack Endgame Of The Anthropocene (Talibam!’s first cinematic album of through-composed ecogothic geosonics via hyperkinetic rhythm-based instrumental/electronic music). 

Matt Nelson (tenor/effects): Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Matt has been playing the saxophone since his days at El Carmelo Elementary School. He left the sunshine of California for the flurries and wintry mix of Northeastern Ohio, where he attended Oberlin College and Conservatory to study with Gary Bartz and Paul Cohen, among others. After graduating he moved back to the Bay Area and became an active member of the experimental/ jazz/noise scene in Oakland and San Francisco. It was in the Bay Area that he began playing with tUnE-yArDs. After recording on the acclaimed album WHOKILL, he spent a large portion of 2010-2012 on tour with the band. In 2010 Matt began to split his time between the Bay Area and Brooklyn, where he now resides full-time. Since relocating to New York he's begun playing regular solo shows, as well as in the band Battle Trance, released their debut record in August 2014 on New Amsterdam Records and NNA Tapes.. Over the past couple years he's had the pleasure of performing with amazing musicians like Ava Mendoza, Peter Evans, Nels Cline, Weasel Walter, Ben Goldberg, Dan Peck, Tom Rainey, Michael Coleman, Sam Ospovat, Bill McHenry, Tim Dahl, Nick Podgurski, and many others. His debut solo record, Lower Bottoms, was released in Fall of 2014. 

Ron Stabinsky (organ) recently released his debut album, Free for One, the culmination of more than a decade of evolving his improvised solo language. In addition to continuing to pursue his ongoing interest in solo piano improvisation, he enjoys working on music in a stylistically diverse array of situations throughout the United States and Europe with many other musicians and ensembles, including free- improvising saxophonist Jack Wright, bass trombone virtuoso David Taylor, Meat Puppets bassist Cris Kirkwood, and NEA Jazz Master David Liebman. Recent festival appearances include Newport Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival (Netherlands), Moers Festival (Germany), Jazzfestival Saalfelden (Austria), Outreach Festival (Austria), and Jazz and More Festival Sibiu (Romania). He is currently a regular member of the band Mostly Other People Do the Killing, the new music ensemble Relâche, the Charles Evans Quartet, and the Peter Evans Ensemble, a new expanded conception of the critically acclaimed Peter Evans Quintet. 

Matthew Mottel (Rhodes/Keytar), is an artist and performer who has worked extensively in the International Arts Community since 1999. He co-founded his performance duo Talibam! with Kevin Shea in 2003. They have released 26 albums and completed over 20 international tours. He has also performed in collective ensembles; CSC Funk Band, Alien Whale, Nymph, and is a band-leader in his own unit Platinum Vision. He has collaborated with his father, photographer Syeus Mottel, choreographer Karole Armitage, Fluxist artist Yasunao Tone, Instrument inventor Cooper-Moore, Visual Artist Peter Coffin and many others. He was an Artist In Residence At Issue Project Room in 2010, an LMCC Swing Space Recipient in 2011 and continues to expand his practice searching for both unique opportunities and collaborations. He has performed at such acclaimed venues as MoMa, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Victoria & Albert Museum London, The Kitchen NYC, All Tomorrow's Parties Festival and more. 

Kevin Shea (drums) is a true original. Few other drummers of his generation are as recognizable and idiosyncratic. Shea has always imbued his playing with a humor and flexibility that few in the jazz world have been able to match. His highly considered approach to the drum set is rooted in virtuosic technique, deliberate rawness, and obsessive inquiry. The global experimental community first took notice of Shea back in 1997 with cult free-rock trio Storm & Stress, alongside Battles/Don Caballero’s Ian Williams. Since then, Shea has been featured on 160 albums and has performed in 45 countries. He maintains a relentlessly prolific and polarizing presence with Talibam! (with Matt Mottel), Mostly Other People Do The Killing (with Ron Stabinsky and Moppa Elliott), People (with Mary Halvorson), Rhys Chatham, David Taylor, and countless other projects in the Avant-Garde, Jazz, Contemporary Music, and less superlative genres. 

Talibam!, a 14-year working unit based in New York City, can be described in various ways -- as a classic keyboards/drums expanded-jazz duo, as Dadaist provocateurs with an innate love for the history of music, as a Fluxus-informed theater troupe, as an electronic ensemble inspired by Stockhausen, or as a rhythm section at the cross hair of agility, speed, punctuation, and intention. Since their inception in 2003, Talibam!’s ultimate goal has been to wed disparate ideologies through proficiency, controversy, inquiry, and compassion. Matt Mottel (keys) and Kevin Shea (drums) have remained devoted to their belief that the application of diversity in sound is paramount to the appreciation of diversity among fellow beings. 

Talibam! delights in creating music that cannot be pinned down within the safe-spaces of existing genres. With each new album, Talibam! reinvents their methodological palette in order to bolster a fresh clarity of joyous auditory surprise, something their fans have come to depend on. Talibam! has worked hard to proselytize their process. To date, Talibam! has released over 30 albums, traveled to over 40 countries, and completed more than 30 international tours … with performances at ATP Festival curated by TV On The Radio, Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival, Queen Elizabeth Hall’s Dance Umbrella Festival, Lincoln Center’s Sound and Vision Festival, MoMA’s “Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde” exhibition, Nickelsdorf Jazz Festival, Tarcento Jazz Festival, Milano Dance Festival, Acéfalo Festival in Chile, Suoni Festival in Montreal, Issue Project Room’s Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain Fest, Forthwith Festival in Winnipeg, Whartscape Fest in Baltimore, and ZXZW Festival in Tilburg, to name a few. Talibam! has collaborated across genre with the likes of Yasunao Tone, Cooper-Moore, Tamio Shiraishi, David Watson, Ingrid Laubrock, Shelley Hirsch, Daniel Carter, Alan Wilkinson, id m theft able, Leila Bordreuil, Briggan Krauss, Ravish Momin, Ron Stabinsky, Rick Parker, Lary Seven, Sam Kulik, Micah Gaugh, Jeremy Wilms, Mick Barr, Peter Evans, Ed Bear, Moppa Elliott, Lukas Ligeti, Robbie Lee, Nate Wooley, Kyle Forester, Tim Dahl, Fritz Welch, Danielle Kuhlmann, Chris Pitsiokos, Jon Irabagon, Anders Nilsson, Mike Pride, Chris Forsyth, Sarah Lipstate, Kyp Malone, Weasel Walter, Tom Blancarte, Michael Evans, Jaime Fennelly, Matt Nelson, Tom Smith, Steve Gunn, David Earl Buddin, and Karole Armitage’s Armitage Gone! Dance company. In addition, Talibam! was awarded residencies at IRT Theater, Incubator Arts Project, and at Swing Space by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Ron Stabinsky - Free for One (2016) Debut Solo Album (HOT CUP RECORDS)

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Ron Stabinsky - Free for One (2016) Debut Solo Album

Free for One, featuring Stabinsky on solo piano, available June 10 on Hot Cup Records

"[Peter] Evans described Ron Stabinsky (piano & prepared piano), the one line-up change to Ghosts, as a 'secret weapon, watch out!' Indeed he seems the perfect pianist for Evans, equally as comfortable in the liminal zone between Jazz and Contemporary Classical music as the leader himself. The interplay between Stabinsky and drummer Jim Black is first rate and a feature throughout."

- Matthew Grigg, The Free Jazz Blog

Mostly Other People Do the Killing pianist Ron Stabinsky's debut recording Free for One is a seamless collection of eight adventurous, genre-hopping solo piano improvisations showcasing the artist's technical virtuosity and unerring musicality. The recording will be released June 10, 2016 on Hot Cup Records, home of MOPDtK.

A 44 1/2-minute program comprising eight contrasting solo piano improvisations recorded on a single day in January 2015, Free for One documents a critical point in the evolution of Stabinsky's improvised solo work which he began in 2002 under the mentorship of Bill Dixon. After more than a decade of experimentation and constant reassessment, Stabinsky entered the studio with no preconceived musical framework, allowing his keen instinct, intuition and past musical experience to converge.

The result is a technically impressive and deeply artistic program of music from which new layers of meaning unfold with each hearing. The simple, looping notes of the ironically-named first track "After It's Over" quickly lead to more complicated, animated patterns that display Stabinsky's pianistic expertise. In tracks like "Viral Inflection," "Gone Song," and "Rapture," he demonstrates the intelligence of his musical ideas and his ability to convey them in stirring ways. From the crystalline, almost danceable trills of "For Reel," to the keyboard mastery in "31," to the improvisational tour de force of "Not Long Now / Long Now" (the record's longest track), and the jazzy feel of "Once, But Again," Free For One is the rare work of a rare pianist, one who cares little for labels and deeply for music, one whose love and command of his instrument shines through in every note.

Stabinsky's passionate interest in the quality of sound recordings and equipment made finding a sensitive, responsive instrument a necessity. Recorded with vacuum tube microphones to 2-inch analog tape on the Hamburg Steinway D at Oktaven Audio in Yonkers, New York by Ryan Streber, with mastering by Seth Foster at Sterling Sound in New York City, Free for One utilizes the best of analog and digital technologies. The uninterrupted performance in the Compact Disc and 96kHz/24-bit download formats closely mirrors the feeling captured by the original analog tape recording.                              

Pianist Ron Stabinsky first started playing with MOPDtK in 2011 as part of a project at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam commemorating the anniversary of Eric Dolphy and Booker Little's Live at the Five Spot.  After collaborating on this and the subsequent Blue project, Stabinsky's presence in the group was solidified. He performs in both the quartet and septet versions of the band and is featured on MOPDtK's three most recent albums Red Hot, Blue, and Mauch Chunk. Stabinsky fits into the aesthetic of the group perfectly, contributing virtuosic solos packed with the irreverence that MOPDtK is known for, as well as musical non-sequiturs, quotations, and references to everything from Philip Glass and Conlon Nancarrow to Billy Joel and earlier MOPDtK material.

In addition to his work with MOPDtK, Stabinsky is an accompanist in virtually every possible context from classical recitals, to community choirs, to improvised music, jazz, pop and everything in between.  Since 2013, Stabinsky has been the pianist for the Peter Evans Quintet, appearing on Destination:Void, the group's epic sci-fi adventure of an album based on the Frank Herbert novel of the same name.  Stabinsky also performs in projects with the Philadelphia New Music Ensemble Relâche, the Charles Evans Quartet with NEA Jazz Master David Liebman, and his collaboration with Cris Kirkwood, bassist of the Meat Puppets.  Stabinsky lives in Plains, PA.

www.hotcuprecords.com

Available June 10 on Hot Cup Records

Mostly Other People Do The Killing - Mauch Chunk (2015)

By Antonio Poscic / freejazzblog

It’s not surprising that nowadays everyone and anyone has a usually quite strong opinion about NYC’s Mostly Other People Do the Killing, the ensemble led and directed by bassist Matthew "Moppa" Elliott. By crafting their style around honest and loving (a fact that many seem to miss!) deconstructions and pseudohomages to almost every genre from the history of jazz (which includes some sacred cows), they pushed themselves into the spotlight of mainstream crowds and, at the same time, raised some eyebrows between (free) jazz connoisseurs and aficionados. Just by perusing the reviews published on this blog, their mission is made simultaneously clear and unclear by the array of conflicting and dissenting opinions. Revered by some, despised and misunderstood by others, Mostly Other People Do the Killing’s approach and attitude puzzles and freaks out, revealing post-modern tendencies behind their superficial facets of mere entertainers.

That’s why Mauch Chunk is exactly the unexpected type of release that we’ve come to expect  from a band that continues to surprise even when they, like this time around, go exploring one of the most rehashed and tired of jazz subgenres: post- and hard-bop. It's largely thanks to the musicians' varied playing styles and approaches and Elliott’s intricate compositions that the band's well-known M.O. hasn't become stale even after ten years. The recipe that they follow appears to be so deceivingly simple. Take a page from the book of (classic) jazz and rewrite it with great care to follow some new, fresh narrative brimming with improvisations and quirky playing. Of course, remember to add a healthy serving of spontaneous and sincere humour (a fact that many seem to be irked by!) which is obviously (to me, at least) never a result of attempts at pandering to audiences. Mauch Chunk thus feels both like a return to roots for the band, revisiting stylistic locations in which their experimentations began, and a new beginning with pianist Ron Stabinsky taking the place of trumpeter Peter Evans as one of the four core members. This change, in turn, also resulted in a shift of Elliott’s compositions towards relatively piano-centered pieces.

Because of that, at first glance Mauch Chunk might appear as a display of the band taking a safer road than on some of their previous records, staying closer to those original hard-bop idioms and tropes, but the flow found just beneath the surface is as inspiring and joyful as ever. The seven short, compact compositions, named as usual after towns in Pennsylvania, are all carefully, intelligently thought out, each bearing a dedication to the individuals that influenced them, yet never feeling overwrought or unoriginal. Elevating the already solid compositions, Jon Irabagon, Kevin Shea, Ron Stabinsky, and Moppa Elliott all contribute their own sparks to the music with short quotations and wild, unpredictable references (I won’t spoil these), improvisational dialogues, and mutedly outrageous piano and saxophone solos.

There are as many variations in group dynamics as there are songs on the record. Jon Irabagon leads the way and veers on the edge of extended techniques on opening “Mauch Chunk Is Jim Thorpe” (dedicated to Henry Threadgill) before things completely fall apart and reassemble themselves. Jon Stabinsky flexes his fingers and counterpoints Irabagon’s licks on the ever accelerating and rolling, dissonant “Obelisk” (inspired by Dave Holland’s music). The whole group, lead by Shea’s drumming, toys with rhythms and time signatures on the bossa nova-infused “West Bolivar” (to Caetano Veloso), while the final “Mehoopany” tries to close the record on a dreamy, contemplative note, only to have Shea’s drumming, the single constantly disruptive element, foretell and introduce the ensuing chaos. In all of these cases, the music underlined by masterful playing never fails to captivate and reward, tickling the mind with the possibility of the material developing even further when performed live.

While Stabinsky’s first proper introduction also brings about an air of change for the group, with Evans’ furious playing replaced by more structured, toned down piano phrases, this is still the Mostly Other People Do the Killing we all know and enjoy. A hint of hidden, unrevealed potential within Stabinsky’s playing and Elliott’s evolving and expanding compositional methods are sure signs that we’ll yet be seeing lots of great stuff from these guys.

Mauch Chunk is Jim Thorpe (for Henry Threadgill)

West Bolivar (for Caetano Veloso)

Obelisk (for Dave Holland)

Niagra (for Will Connell)

Herminie (for Sonny Clark)

Townville (for Brieanne Beaujolais)

Mehoopany (for Frank Fonseca)

Jon Irabagon: alto saxophone

Ron Stabinsky: piano

Moppa Elliott: Bass

Kevin Shea: drums

BUY THIS ALBUM!!!

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