Sex Mob

There is no question that these guys are the real dope. It's just hard to nail down what kind of dope they are. This is for fans of freaked out jazz, or if you enjoy a little side dish of avant-garde with your main course. The sound is somewhere between Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, happy Charles Mingus, and John Lurie with a bipolar disorder. All of the guys are mothers on their instruments, and all star at some point on the album. They weave in straight melodies in with warped harmonies, twisted breaks and wicked samples. Steven Bernstein, who plays slide trumpet and mellophone, is the writer, arranger and conductor of this quintessentially New York mind fuck. The originals are simply fantastic, and the covers ("About A Girl," "The Mooch, For What It's Worth" and "Ripple") span Nirvana, Duke Ellington, Steven Stills and the Grateful Dead. Their versions of these are the most original interpretations I've ever heard. A very frighteningly cool album that demonstrates how nasty jazz can be when played by guys who intimately understand the essence of high octane rock, and the history of music for that matter.