Mostly Other People Do The Killing @ The Vortex - 14th July 2011

[Guest]

A quartet of sax, trumpet, drum and led by a bassist.

... founded on the idea that jazz should be fun, engaging and thoroughly contemporary.

They didn't strike me as any of these things once they'd been going for about 10 minutes.

Elliott's unique and original method of composition uses instantly recognizable gestures from the American aural lexicon to set up expectations in the ears of the listener. Once established, MOPDTK deviates from these expectations as rapidly as possible

Nowhere near rapidly enough.

... only (to) bring them back in myriad transformations and abstractions.

They use variation on the theme as the key device.

The tunes themselves range from bossas to bugaloos, rock to smooth Jazz, and swing to disco, often within the same composition.

They use rhythmically familiar variation on the theme as the key device. They use it in every composition.

They do it as a cha-cha, they do it as swing, they do play 'good time' music of a sort but also music lacking any real character. There was alot of pastiche, alot of quotation and an awful lot of walking bass. MOP seemed to be a one-joke cabaret act. I wondered if their aim is to test the audience's patience by playing their mash-ups at such length? The cumulative effect was like watching a compendium of Monty Python list sketches played in descending order of effectiveness.

Can't fathom why MOP were playing 2 nights here, I thought they were really long-winded. For a gauge of the calibre of their comedy, picture Les Dennis impersonating Les Dawson at one of Dawson's magnificent sieges of the piano.

[Ian Thumwood]

MOPDTK are a pretty cultive band buit their records are really difficult to get hold of. I suppose the reference to famous album covers on their CD covers is pretty jokey even if the send up of the Jarret Koln Concert cover did mke me laugh.

This group's discs are pretty well received in the jazz media and they seem like a more franatic version of John Zorn's "Masada" project of the last decade or so. Peter Evans is impressive but I would tend to agree that the humour may eventually be wearying even if I quite like what little I have heard them play.

[hackneyvi]

http://www.hotcuprecords.com/shop_albums.html

Four albums available here, each for around $13US and no postal charge it seemed.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

their albums are on emusic as well ...

i really like this group from the albums and the videos, but have never sat through a whole gig .... they are one of the most exciting and interesting jazz groups currently playing as far as i hear on the records .... in another discussion i likened the excitement to the first hearing of the Ornette Coleman Quartet ... Peter Evans the trumpet player is an astonishing player and makes some deeply impressive music in other contexts as well, or here. or here


i think i would have loved the gig hackneyvi and wiggled all night long ....

[hackneyvi]

i think i would have loved the gig hackneyvi and wiggled all night long ....

The strange thing about the audiences in Dalston are how little they move. A few toes tap but the old folks seem too arthritic to wiggle and the younger ones ... I dunno. I'm not sure they even know how to wiggle or that they think they're allowed to. This music should be danced with but it's responded to, albeit with smiles and grins from some of the audience, as a gallery video installation; standing, sitting, staring.

Maybe the environmental muffler of the iPod has destroyed the young's ability to respond to music whilst they're actually listening to it?

I completely missed the point of the music, Calum. But, not for the first time, I'm reminded of a remark by a friend of 30 years ago who said:

If you like a band, their music has character. If you don't like a band, it "all sounds the same."

It may be that the 'local' music I'm hearing in Dalston is actually parochial but I find it much more interesting.

[hackneyvi]

Another 'problem' for me was that I arrived just as they came on and was getting a beer as they started.

The first number was so like something by The Police ('Every step you take' was in my mind) and something else (probably Lady Gaga ), I took them to be covers band. Was amazed when the leader told us it was an original composition. That happened all the way through. Between the familiarity of the music, the incessant walking bass, the sequential variation (though with stretches of free-er improv, but too commonly over the familiar dance rhythms) and the bum note playing; it was simply a muddle of the familiar which made me yearn to hear something either wholly free or something played straight.

This all sat in a middle ground of commonplace rhythms and often commonplace distortions of their own tunes leading frequently through quotation to feeling part of the joke was the derivativeness of their own music.

[burning dog]

Only heard them on the internet yuotube, so perhaps this is unfair but...Perhaps they don't seem to play loving parodies? A lot of stuff nowaydays tends to sound glib and facetious to me. Lester Bowie was criticised for his "humour" but he really got to bottom of Doo-Wop tunes (which he obvioulsly adored) in the proccess. The problem there was the grinding sheer good nature of the man not a sardonic, sidways glance nod at etc. etc.

Having said that Evans is a brilliant musician, straight ahead free bop would be interesting from him as shown when this band get into that thing without too muchself consciousness.

"Every breath you take" sounds like a rejected melody from an early Herbie Hancock session so the references are going round in cricles. ("Milk Man" rather than "Watemelon Man"?)

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

this review reflects my own responses to the Coimbra Concert double album ..... and its reference to the Our Man in Jazz album by Rollins is telling imv ...

[charles t]

This thread finally provides a 'cover' to express an analogy to The Emperor Isn't Weaving Any Tones, when it concerns Sonny Rollins...

Finally a negative review lives within the latest issue of Down Beat calling attention - literally - to 'Every Breath You [Struggle To] Take' by this tenorist.

[hackneyvi]

this review reflects my own responses to the Coimbra Concert double album ..... and its reference to the Our Man in Jazz album by Rollins is telling imv ...

It is very fullsome, isn't it? And convincingly enthusiastic. Not for the first time, I was obviously missing something here. Whether that's a matter of it not matching my taste or it simply being too sophisticated for me, I can't tell.

One question I asked myself when thinking it over today was, if my impatience arose from the music being referential, not knowing their sources it then just didn't resonate with me? In that regard, I wondered if they were an afficionados' and academics' band?

[hackneyvi]

Only heard them on the internet yuotube, so perhaps this is unfair but...Perhaps they don't seem to play loving parodies? A lot of stuff nowaydays tends to sound glib and facetious to me. Lester Bowie was criticised for his "humour" but he really got to bottom of Doo-Wop tunes (which he obvioulsly adored) in the proccess. The problem there was the grinding sheer good nature of the man not a sardonic, sidways glance nod at etc. etc.

I found them tiresome but there was nothing sour about their playing or behaviour and just as they were smiling themselves, I did see a couple of members of the standing audience smiling and almost laughing. There was pleasure on both sides though the pleasure most visible from my vantage point was coming off the stage.

I did turn round and put my back to them before leaving (to see if changing the picture had an impact on my perception of the music). The dozen or so faces I could see all looked attentive but earnestly, like parishioners listening to their holiday preacher.

I don't want to suggest at all that they were at fault but the style simply left me stone cold.

[burning dog]

Im glad to hear there was genuine pleasure for most Phil. I expect it may have left me cold too though.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

hackneyvi ... it is their depth of reverence and their sense of mischief that endears them .... however it is an ensemble and they can both have off nights and/or reach a stage where they are a pastiche of themselves, i hope not in the latter case ... but one never knows ... [they could just be jet lagged - i am still recovering a week after flying back]

... they are such a perfect antithesis to the nordic noodlings eh ....

[hackneyvi]

Just bumping these 2 MOPDTK threads because after all the posting before the broadcast, nobody's said anything after.

The MOPDTK is still on Jazz on 3 for 24 hours till Monday 6th September:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013xs11

[hackneyvi]

10 minutes in, it's more engaging this time than it was on the night, though the walking bass has put in a pair of appearances already. I like walking bass but its pert ubiquity in this gig somehow put me off. Shall the frivolity come to seem laborious from incessantness/incessancy/incessantcy (?) after an hour?

Great finish to the first track, though! Track 2 - here's the walking bass again but there are great moments.

But who IS the Vortex's "Yee-aah!" guy? I went a couple of weeks ago and his "Yee-aah!" announced the end of every bloody number. I hope he's not going to MC all night on this gig.