Hear The Track Here
For a couple of years in the late 1980's I lived for a while in the American city of Baltimore, Maryland. It was a pleasant place (although it has its problems like all American cities) and I enjoyed my time there. Oh oh and oh, how things have changed. Now, it would seem, they have capitulated to the powerful Insect lobby and invited the feared (and famed) Mosquito Death Squadron to wildly change the structure of sound within the city limits. Scarcely Doubt Laughing is the proof that MDS are here and among us, this take being recorded at the Talking Head gig in that fair city earlier this year. By now, this being almost the end of the year, I would imagine that the city's residents are just waking from their fearful nightmares and life is returning to almost-normal.
It will, of course, never be anything like normal ever again.
They let the beast in their midst, after all.
I personally really like MDS because part of this outfit is one of my favourite Soundclick characters - Pilesar. The cast of characters in the band may also ring some bells, presumably Hell's bells because when you have a guitarist called Corpsefinger it's gotta be all downhill from there on... During the week or so I had this track hanging around I went to see the Moscow Composers Orchestra at the London Jazz Festival and I have to say they dovetail together as if they were made for each other. Both are live events, both are wildly chaotic - on the surface anyway - and yet each convey the true essence of jazz as performed by Charlie Mingus and the like. Seeing this kind of music close up and personal carries its own magic and it's almost impossible, I think, to convey it to an unseeing medium but surprisingly MDS have caught the set perfectly - ambience and all.
Even though most of it was waaayyy over my head, I did enjoy the gig and I did enjoy this track, probably moreso because of the connections it made. I can't pretend to be an aficienado of this kind of jazz, it just either makes sense to me or it doesn't. I have mentioned, I think, that I would like to see MSD (and all its other partners in crime, they know who they are) live and I think I'd get the same kick out of it. For sure, blaring often discordant jazz can be extremely off putting to a lot of people and I fully understand why - having hated it myself for the better part of my life. However, as I become more and more knowledgable about music and it's place in our lives I can - finally - see the point. And Mosquito Death Squadron make it beautifully.
Live jazz, love it or loathe it. Highly Recommended for those that do love it.
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