JANUARY, 2002

CD REVIEWS
STANTON MOORE
Flyin‚ The Koop
(Blue Thumb / Verve Records)
By da Flower Punk

It has been evident for some time that Galactic's Stanton Moore ranks among the best second line drummers of his generation. What is now becoming evident is that Moore is more than that. Stanton Moore is becoming one of the better drummers of his generation period, second line or otherwise. On this CD, Moore is joined by Chris Wood (bass), Karl Denson (saxophone, flute), Skerik (saxophone) and Brian Seeger (guitar). The group explores an wide variety of sounds that must, for the lack of a better term, be called jazz, all the while keeping the energy a party level high. There is the hard bop of "Tang The Hump," the New Orleans spirit of "Fallin' Off The Floor" (which features Mardi Gras style vocal samples from the Wild Magnolias), and the groove meets post bop of "Let's Go." Skerik blows snake guitar sounds, as he is wont to do, on the controlled chaos of "Launcho Diablo." Throughout the collection, Chris Wood seems not only to bend the necks and entire bodies of his huge basses, he transmits that bending directly to listeners' spines, as he is wont to do. The psychedelic metal of "Things Fall Apart" is what we might have gotten if Jimi Hendrix came of age in the era of loops and samplers, but again the "guitar" lines are not guitar at all, they are Skerik's "saxophonics." "Amy's Lament" is the kind of twisted, hard core blues that one might imagine coming from Lester Bowie or Henry Threadgill. "Organized Chaos" might have to be considered industrial jazz. And so on. Like his previous solo outing, "All Kooked Out," this is superb record from Stanton Moore.