Mojo Mancini
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Mojo Mancini

New York City, New York, United States

New York City, New York, United States
Band Jazz Blues

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This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Creepy and Dreamy with Mojo Mancini"

http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/creepy-and-dreamy-with-mojo-mancini/ May 30, 2010
New York noir doesn’t get any better than this. With Big Lazy on the shelf, Mojo Mancini has moved in to
take over the role of New York’s most deliciously creepy instrumental group. With allusions to the Doors
and Henry Mancini, they’re aptly named, blending a stylish dark rock vibe with equally dark Hollywood
atmospherics. Their album is sort of an accident: tenor sax player Rick DePofi, Rosanne Cash
bandleader/guitarist John Leventhal, drummer Shawn Pelton, Bob Dylan keyboardist Brian Mitchell and
bassist Conrad Korsch would get together and jam just for fun, or to blow off steam between gigs and/or
recording dates. Happily, they had the good sense to record these jams, realizing that they had genuine
magic on their hands. The arduous task of sifting through the tapes fell to DePofi, a professional recording
engineer. This is the result. At one point or another, all the songs here sway to a trip-hop beat – and as dark
as a lot of them are, there are also several which are irresistibly funny.
The album opens with a characteristically eerie, David Lynch style wee-hours scenario, Leventhal playing
terse, tense jazz lines against Mitchell’s organ swells. Gansevoort, named after the street just off the
Westside Highway where the album was recorded (and where bodies were once dumped with regularity) is
an echoey trip-hop organ funk groove, part early 70s Herbie Hancock score, part sleek stainless steel club
music, part Jimmy McGriff. Just Sit, featuring a sample of poet/activist Jack Hirschman, welds watery
1970-era David Gilmour chorus-box guitar to balmy sax over a laid-back funk groove.
Leventhal turns an expansive, sunbaked guitar solo over to DePofi’s tenor on the pensive Clear Fluids,
which then winds it up to a big crescendo. The dub-inflected Peace Plan moves from spacy Rhodes piano to
a sparse, Steve Ulrich-style guitar hook. The most Steve Ulrich-inflected number here is Let Us Pray, with
Creepy and Dreamy with Mojo Mancini « Lucid Culture
its Twilight Zone organ, David Gilmour noir guitar lines and a couple of playfully sacrilegious Lawrence
Ferlinghetti samples. There’s also a big sky theme, its disquieting undercurrent evoking Bill Frisell; a
cinematic mini-suite with smoky sax that evokes mid-90s REM side project Tuatara; the banjo trip-hop of
Long Neck, and the echoey, dubwise Slipper Room with its maze of keyboards and a rousing organ
crescendo that segues into the next tune. Play loud, play after dark for best results. - Lucid Cukture


Discography

An abbreviated list of the band's collective credits includes the following artists:
David Byrne, Michelle Branch, Rosanne Cash, Ray Charles, Marc Cohn, Shawn Colvin, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Al Green, Buddy Guy, Charlie Haden, Levon Helm, Bruce Hornsby, Paul McCartney, Ingrid Michaelson, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Joan Osborne, Dolly Parton, Regina Spektor, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, and many others.

Photos

Bio

The music on this CD is taken from three nights of recording at a studio on Gansevoort Street in New York City. All but two of the selections were composed spontaneously at the sessions. The approach to the recordings was simple: one musician would start a rhythmic, harmonic, melodic or sonic idea and eventually the other muscians would fall in, searching, defining, experimenting, pushing, laying low, creating melodies, harmonies and grooves. If an idea resonated, we would go with it. Rick DePofi then took on the herculean task of sifting through the hours of performances and editting them down to the 'compositions' you now hear.

This music belongs to no particular genre or pre-conceived musical category. It is simply what five very different musicians brought to three extremely enjoyable nights. John Leventhal - 2010

Mojo Mancini is:
Rick DePofi ~ John Leventhal ~ Shawn Pelton ~ Brian Mitchell ~ Conrad Korsch

An abbreviated list of the band's collective credits includes the following artists:
David Byrne, Michelle Branch, Rosanne Cash, Ray Charles, Marc Cohn, Shawn Colvin, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Al Green, Buddy Guy, Charlie Haden, Levon Helm, Bruce Hornsby, Paul McCartney, Ingrid Michaelson, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Joan Osborne, Dolly Parton, Regina Spektor, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, and many others.