Over the past week I've had the pleasure of coming across the Brooklyn trio, Moon Hooch. The band is formed of saxophonists Mike Wilbur and Wenzl McGowen, and drummer James Muschler who, as the story goes, met as students at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City.
The trio began their band by busking, most popularly on subway platforms in Brooklyn, where they began to initiate impromptu raves that were regularly shut down by the NYPD. They call the Moon Hooch sound 'cave music', developing around the approach of playing dance music, with trance-like drumbeats and looping, frenetic saxophone grooves.
The band recorded their self-titled debut last year in 2013 over a 24 hour period, and because of their consistent busking and rehearsal regime, most of the songs were recorded in one take. The result was a record which captured the essence of Moon Hooch's early subway performances: frantic, horn-y, dance-able grooves, accompanied by fast and furious drumbeats.
Perhaps the last song on the album 'Mega Tubes', which featured vocals by Alena Spanger, was an premonition of Moon Hooch's future. Whilst maintaining Muschler's infectious live beats and the saxophone grooves of Wilbur and McGowen, it underlines a change from their earlier songs, with an added electronic, synthy element.
And this is the direction that their new album 'This is Cave Music' has taken. Whilst the new tracks maintain the infectious horn grooves and frenetic drumbeats, they also incorporate more vocals, synths and 'dubby' basslines alongside a greater production value. Whereas their debut was about capturing the feelings of live performances, their followup is more concerned with attention to detail, and developing an electronic dance element into the music.
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