Formed in 2003, the wacky satirists MOPDTK are the new arch subversives of the New York underground jazz scene. Their bustling collage-like ensemble play covers the length and breadth of (but not only) jazz history so they’re as far away from being grounded by a particular idiom as you can probably get. A mission of theirs is to toy with your expectations. As with their previous recording, which amounted to a piss-take of smooth jazz, this one takes what is a more affectionate aim at the jazz and blues of the late-1920s to early-30s. But it is the spirit of the Hot Five in post-modern clothing, infiltrated with elements of anything from Love Supreme-like cosmic meditations, bebop through to free improv gesturing and thunderous post-Zorn downtown jazz-thrash. Spearheaded by bassist Moppa Elliot who writes all the material, the band expands into a seven piece for Red Hot. The frontline nucleus is a pair of restlessly virtuosic New York musicians: the Evan Parker-influenced trumpeter Peter Evans and post-bop sax avant-provocateur Jon Irabagon. It’s a band that can find a musical connection between the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jelly Roll’s Red Hot Peppers, and Robert Johnson to Andre 3000 and does so with half-spontaneous arrangements that suggest the self-conscious parody and jump-cuts of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave films. Half way in, the pianist Ron Stabinsky strings together quotes from Scott Joplin to the pop-jazzer Joe Jackson for an introduction, and cements them together with Cecil Taylor-ish, fragmented, dance-like phrasing. But that’s not a track that’s exceptional. Red Hot is one of the best studio documents of MOPDTK so far.