Mostly Other People Do the Killing - Shamokin!!!

Hot Cup 63

Irreverence in jazz-based improv can be a high wire walk. Take things too far and you’re liable to plummet headfirst onto the pavement. Only occasionally is it accomplished without injury to player or listener. A mouthful in title, Moppa Elliott’s Mostly Other People Do the Killing, mix mirth and audacity and arrive at some of the most blatantly fun music of recent memory. Even the disc’s packaging takes playful potshots at pre-established iconography, cribbing its design from Lee Morgan’s A Night in Tunisia and containing liner commentary by one Leondardo Featherweight.

As behooves an ensemble bent on properly powder-kegging the Jazz Ivory Tower, the players all have conservatory chops to spare, particularly alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon and trumpeter Peter Evans. Evans has been the subject of recent contention in these pages, but his blistering pan-stylistic work on this set should put any doubter’s protests to rest. Instrumental commands rarely come as complete as he pinballs from high caliber harbop to texture-based exhalations, drawing a line map from Hubbard to Dixon in the process. Irabagon is like Zorn sans the jejune histrionics. In other words, the more madcap side of his reed masticating has a purpose beyond mere sensationalistic effect. Both men put their instruments through such paces that the tempoes they clock reach comedic proprortions. Elliott and Shea are similarly suited to nosebleed speeds, veering from tumbling barrages to precision metrics on the proverbial Roosevelt-emblazoned coin.

The band evinces a nearly omniverous approach to style encircling everything from boogaloo to bossa nova to skronk. Elliott tugs his strings Pops Foster mode on “Hop Bottom Hop” slipping in funk-informed syncopations between slaps. Irabagon references Getzian bossa nova on the convincingly idiomatic “Dunkelbergers” while “Lover” takes the balladic trope of its title to another reliable extreme. Shifts and detours occur so rapidly that doubling back with the aid of remote technology is sometimes necessary to fully comprehend all that’s heard. A grand finale rave-up of “Tunisia” sprawls past a third of an hour, eclipsing Morgan’s epochal Blue Note reading from a half century earlier. Shea commences the action with a protracted drum deluge that surges along through a medley of hip hop sampled beats. The ensuing solos of Evans and Irabagon visit vastly different points of the compass, touching upon the Dizzy theme only in passing and preferring points unknown.

MOPDtK accompany their name with a logo depicting a catastrophic gunshot wound to the head. The music is a keen analogue as minds are sure to be blown by the near-masterpiece they’ve come up with here. It may test the patience of purists from the first notes, but that’s precisely the point.

~ Derek Taylor