You’re surely going to listen to a band called Moth Cock right? In fact it’s difficult to think of a better band name, or a name that makes you want to hear the music more – particularly if you’re blessed with childish tendencies. This Ohio duo who have been releasing their music since 2007, process saxophone and clarinet through various electronics to create weird shimmery psychedelic freak-outs. Across three sprawling cassettes, and with 6 of the 14 pieces clocking in at or above 20 minutes, this is a pretty epic release, with these truly demented exploratory jams that alternatively sound like a Nitendo trying to have sex with a rubber ducky, mystical rituals for a hard rubbish collection, or some kind of dementia ridden improv that’s slowly losing touch with reality. Nothing fits, yet somehow everything fits. You have no idea where they will go next – but you get the sense neither do they – and they don’t care. It’s music that’s all about the journey, there are beats, squawks, drones and electric gurgles in all manner of configurations, but all you can do is surrender to their mischievous energy and try and hold on.
There’s something truly joyous and unselfconscious about this music. It’s playful, exploratory and fun. You tend to lose all sense of time and space. It’s hard not to be reminded of the unbridled chaos of Black Dice, in that you get the sense that they are doing their best to harness their music into some kind of cohesion, yet joyfully failing – because failure is fun and cohesion is boring. Yet Moth Cock are operating with a much wider screen (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write in my life). I’d call them novelty noise, or prog improv, where their weirdness and unpretentious improvisations are all about drawing you in – not excluding you.
This is one of those albums that is pretty much every genre of music, they’ve thrown in everything and the kitchen sink – whether they’ve meant to or not. But you know you’re in good hands, as anyone willing to pun it up on Herb Alpert’s infamous Tijuana Brass album deserves some solid respect.
