Articles

Sexmob at Blue Note Milano

By Roberto Cifarelli

Sex Mob: Cultural Capital

By Glenn Astarita

Sex Mob celebrates 20-years in the business going back to their initial 1996 gigs at New York City's downtown music scene hub, The Knitting Factory. With its first album in four-years, the band jubilantly returns via its crisscrossing of jazz with pop, funk and other genres, complemented by witty dialogues, mischievous improv sequences and treks into the free zone. Unlike previous programs this album consists of all slide trumpeter, Steven Bernstein originals. To a certain degree, Sex Mob's distinct stylizations ...

Top Ten "Most Read" Album Reviews: 2013

By AAJ Staff

All About Jazz tracks how often an album review is read, and the reviews listed below represent our top ten published in 2013. Sex Mob Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti (Sex Mob Plays Fellini) Wayne Shorter Quartet Wayne Shorter Quartet: Without a Net John Scofield John Scofield: Uberjam Deux Keith Jarrett / Gary Peacock / Jack DeJohnette Somewhere Pat Metheny Pat Metheny: Tap--John Zorn's Book of Angels | ...

Sex Mob: Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti (Sex Mob Plays Fellini: The Music of Nino Rota)

By Troy Collins

Founded 17 years ago as a showcase for leader Steven Bernstein's unique slide trumpet, Sex Mob has since embraced a far more ambitious mission: to revive the adventurous spirit of prewar jazz. Bernstein realized early on that playing radically altered covers was the best way to lure an audience into his roguish sound world. Since then the group has deconstructed and reworked everything from ABBA's “Fernando" to the “Macarena," while 2001's Sex Mob Does Bond (Ropeadope) was dedicated solely to ...

Sex Mob: Sex Mob Meets Medeski

By Lyn Horton

The two-minute “Mob Rule Invocation," which starts Sex Mob Meets Medeski, is enough to turn the tables on conventional jazz quintet genre, pointing the way to bridge the gap between the melodic and music that is so squarely and pristinely raucous that its intention is measurable in the fun the musicians are clearly having.

Recorded live at the Willisau Jazz Festival in 2006, this album reaches across a spectrum from spontaneous improvisation to pieces from Duke Ellington and Count Basie, ...

Sex Mob: Sexotica

By James Taylor

Sexotica showcases a unique band performing in an even more unique genre. Sex Mob, New York City's best band, according to a 2000 poll, has made a name for itself with jumping live shows and pop song-full setlists. Led by trumpeter Steven Bernstein, the quartet draws on the music of exotica pioneer Martin Denny for this sultry recording.

In addition to Bernstein, Sex Mob features altoist Briggan Krauss, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen. The band turned to the ...

Sex Mob: Sexotica

By Brad Glanden

The easy listening boom of the middle 20th Century gave rise to some highly esoteric music. The “space age" fashions embraced by many a swinger hinted at a future that was never to materialize; an eagerness to test out new hi-fi systems resulted in a proliferation of quirkily arranged, bizarrely mixed records by bandleaders like Esquivel and Enoch Light. Among the strangest subgenres to emerge during this period was exotica, spearheaded by Martin Denny, who unashamedly regarded his music as ...