LP Review: MOOP - MOOP (2019)

Welcome to the world of MOOP, or the Mooper Crew as they also call themselves. MOOP is a crazily musical quartet from Poitiers in Western France, consisting of drummer Erwin, guitar player Julien, and Guillaume and William, both playing the bariton sax. Their style? MOOP call it Brutal Jazz. While we're going through the review, we might find out why that name is very accurate.

The music on MOOP's selftitled debut is driven by the intense and omnipresent full sound of the two saxophones. William use their bariton saxes to create various schemes of harmony and disharmony, while always filling out the whole room. Nevertheless, guitar and drums are no secondary characters. Julien's freejazz licks and lines swiftly jump and meander between the saxy soundscape and always attract the listener's ear. His guitar is meanwhile presented in a vast amount of different sounds, from dry, strong, and clean picks, over Heavy Metal-like riffing, up to heavily effectful parts that sound like a synthesizer. Erwin on the drums also is perfectly lined-up in this beautiful madness. His percussions are sometimes a soft company to the remaining instruments, then they drive forward in a Hard Rock manner, and then he turns on the Jazz-mode, and just lets himself go in the most ecstatic way.

How to describe this gorgeous djungle of perfectly-on-beat crazyness? MOOP play the Heavy Metal version of Brass Jazz - or maybe the Doublesax-Jazz version of Hard and Heavy Rock. The quartet from Poitiers has found their perfect niche somewhere between Henry Mancini and Pantera, between Ahmad Jamal and Anthrax, and definitely between lounge and feakshow. In their disharmonic parts I was reminded of Bourges-en-Bresse's weirdos Ni a little.

The arrangement of MOOP's first record is another reason why this disc is a fantastic and genius work. The A-side starts off slowly and softly while immediately adding disharmonic slide-ins preparing the audience for what is still to come. By every new theme and song the amount of craziness increases. But MOOP understand how to build an arc of suspense and therefore decelerate again and again, or even add stops, just to push down the throttle more intensely afterwards.

On the B-side the record climaxes with the great track "Tourments d'un socialiste sous  un gouvernement rom" - probably my favourite song on this record. Together with the rather slower following track "Joe reste cool" MOOP combine all elements that they have built up on the five songs of their album. This is the most brutal, massively intense, various, and genius phase of the LP - the total climax. And then? With "Zo dus" MOOP create a suddenly calm and atmospheric soundscape, like a thick fog covering the burned land they left behind - beautiful!
I am sheerly amazed and happy by this record. Eight tracks full of Heavy and Freaky Jazz, lots of surprises and awesome energetic music for an adept ear. Around three quarters of an hour full of sophisticated and brutal beauty.