Sexmob
Sexmob is a band of the now: post-modern waltzes mutating into dub-echoed free jazz. Sexmob is social music: a rollicking midnight set with clatter and drinks and a band. Sexmob is a happy contradiction: an experimental jazz outfit whose music has slid readily into the mainstream via Saturday Night Live, MTV, and National Public Radio.
Dime Grind Palace is a house of deeply lasting pleasures: underground trombone legend Roswell Rudd bellowing and blowing over sweetly surprising changes. Dime Grind Palace is a house of sudden revelry: an accessible groove-etched hootenanny of frayed squawks and squeals.
The winners of two Downbeat Critics' Polls (Best Beyond Group, Best Acoustic Group) have made what bandleader and trumpeter Steven Bernstein calls his dream record. After four LPs focusing on the songbooks of others (including Duke Ellington and James Bond composer John Barry), the seven-year running Sexmob has turned in an album of original material in their own unique voice, the result of an ongoing dialogue between master players (saxophonist Briggan Krauss, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer Kenny Wollesen) and a diverse palette of inspirations ranging from the Art Ensemble of Chicago to Dixieland to Little Richard. The album is really about the evolution of the band, Bernstein says.
I wanted to make a record for music-heads, continues Bernstein, the man who the New York Times called a rogue historian of jazz. I think everyone has a music-head inside of them, he says. I wanted to turn people on the way the Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra record turned me on. It was real listenable, but there was all this slightly scary stuff going on there. It's not background music. And neither is this.
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In Pictures
Album Review
- Cultural Capital by Nicola Negri
- Cultural Capital by Glenn Astarita
Year in Review
Album Review
- Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti (Sex Mob Plays Fellini: The Music of Nino Rota) by Troy Collins
- Sex Mob Meets Medeski by Lyn Horton
- Sexotica by James Taylor
- Sexotica by Brad Glanden
- Sexotica by Mark Corroto
- Sexotica by Troy Collins
October 08, 2013
April 07, 2009
"This is Our Music" is Back! Sex Mob, Planet Dream, and Glassband on...
November 27, 2007
The Sex Mob as Part of a Triple Bill Presented by the Ars Nova...
This new project makes for a copacetic counterpart to the group's latest album, Sex Mob Plays Fellini... –Wall Street Journal
Sexmob has been straddling the lines between genres for 17 years by incorporating popular tunes into instrumental jazz, and putting the emphasis on beats that move feet. Drummer Kenny Wollesen's funk rhythms, particularly of the New Orleans variety, create a party atmosphere, and Bernstein's visually striking slide trumpet doesn't hurt the hedonistic vibe that Sexmob conveys. –OregonLive.com
[That spirit] – one of wailing, riotous abandon mixed with eccentric song choices, high musicianship and healthy doses of funky downtown grit – is on ample display on the group's first live recording, Meets Medeski... –All About Jazz
The band Sexmob specializes in a distinct strain of deconstructionist improvised music: jazz that aims at fun by bouncing off the walls. –NPR Music
...Steven Bernstein's Sexmob have given themselves one task: to make modern jazz fun. –Popmatters
...Sexmob, the pugnacious four-piece effectively led by the trumpeter Steven Bernstein... –The New York Times
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