Moon Hooch: Red Sky

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

James Muschler (d, perc)
Wenzl McGowen (ts, bs, contrabass cl, syn)
Michael Wilbur (ts, ss, bs, v, syn)

Label:

Hornblow/Palmetto

Dec/Jan/2016/2017

Catalogue Number:

HBGR10

RecordDate:

date not stated

Moon Hooch's gigs say a lot about jazz in Britain's broadening horizons. They symbolise the music's border police standing down, and young audiences losing their fear of instrumental improv, especially if it attacks them with a rave's relentlessness. GoGo Penguin and Snarky Puppy pioneered the shift, but this Brooklyn band take saxes and drums (and clarinets!) much further onto the dancefloor. Their third album rides on pressure-cooker, seesaw beats, bolstering the bottom end with baritone and bass horns. The mostly twin-sax frontline also shrieks to declamatory, bird-cry heights, while Michael Wilbur's fragile, blankly desolate vocals on the percussive yet gliding ‘Sunken Ship’ are in an indie dance-rock line stretching from New Order to Hot Chip. The warmly melancholy, slow surge of ‘Broken Tooth’'s clarinet and Moogs, Balkan rhythmic punch of ‘Something Else’ and ecstatic swirl and squelch of ‘Rough Sex’ demonstrate the layered studio variety attempted. It can't convey the excitement of Moon Hooch's gigs, but smoothly suggests their content.

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