Mardi Gras.BB
Album: Crime Story Tapes
Label: Hazelwood
Tracks: 16
Website: http://www.myspace.com/mardigrasbb

France has the electro swing of Caravan Palace, the Netherlands has Caro Emerald's swinging film soundtrack, and now Germany pitches in with the Mardi Gras BBs' "Crime Story Tapes". This CD could be described as electro-trad-jump-jive-film-noir music - but that wouldn't tell you anything, and Hey Ho! who cares about labels anyhow?

The easiest way to describe this album is to say that it uses a Chandleresque film noir narrative to play around with some 40's (and earlier) styles in a contemporary context. This 10-piece "eccentric experimental brass orchestra" combines traditional jazz instruments (sousaphone, not bass, and bass drum and symbol rather than a full drum kit) with guitars and turntables to create a highly atmospheric sequence of tunes linked together with a gangster-film narrative. And the stories are as bizarre as the music! Sicilian immigrants, Indian illusionists and Hollywood actresses meander through a series of off-beat experiences to a background of period music with a 21st Century groove. Opening track "Headshot" is just that; a vampish blues with lyrics that start "They shot him in the head, but he just wasn't dead…" providing an opportunity for raucous riffs from the 4-piece brass section, and short 30's style trombone and trumpet solos. "Bumblebee" is a chunk of 20's ragtime jazz about a low-life pusher/fixer punctuated by turntable scratching, banjo strumming and a period trumpet solo. "If There Was Love" is a slow dirge, with a simplistic guitar solo which could have been lifted from a Jonathan Richman album, while "250,000 people" is a danceable piece of big-band swing underpinned by a mean sousaphone walking bassline.

Not surprisingly, "Bar Mitzvah" is slow kletzmer, and "Chinatown" is another slow-drag funeral march with a screaming sax solo - both rich in the noirish imagery which form the linking theme of the album. The songs are the product of main vocalist Doc Wenz, and the narrative is "based on" his novel of the same name. According to the publicity, the music celebrates "Lindy Hop, Swing and Balboa", but the rhythms and arrangements cover a much wider range of jazz and dance music from the 20's, 30's and 40's, intertwined with samples and turntable effects. The only drawback to this rollicking and mostly very danceable CD is the filmic narrative, which unfortunately breaks up the swing in it's attempt to convey the atmosphere of New York in the black-and-white film era. As with many other attempts to combine spoken narrative with jazzy music, the impact has a tendency to wear off with repeated listening. But don't let you this put you off dipping into this full-on attempt recreate the atmosphere of inter-war NYC. And that wasn't a request, brother!

Martin Price