Search - Moon Hooch :: Moon Hooch

The reaction is instantaneous. It doesn't even matter when they're the opening act
no one in the room has heard before -- as soon as Moon Hooch starts playing, it's as
if the room becomes a living, surging, pulsing thing. They call it 'cave music': like
house music, but more primitive and jagged and raw. But there are no DJs or laptops
here -- just one drum kit and two saxophones.

Moon Hooch -- saxophonists Mike Wilbur and Wenzl McGowen, and drummer
James Muschler -- met while all three were students at The New School for Jazz and
Contemporary Music in New York City. They found in each other a similar drive to
work harder, practice more than anyone else, and put in eight hours a day in the
school's rehearsal rooms on top of their coursework.

They played their first 'gig' busking in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
before moving on to the L train subway platform at Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn
initiating the first of many impromptu underground raves. (They've since been
banned from playing in the Bedford station by a weary NYPD. Fortunately, there are
plenty of other, friendlier stations.)

The 'cave music' sound developed around an organic approach to playing electronic
dance music. The looping, frenetic sax melodies and James's furious drumming are
fierce and trance-like, as Mike and Wenzl rock back and forth, pushing and pulling
each other from across the stage. Sometimes Wenzl switches over to a contrabass
clarinet, or inserts a long cardboard tube into the bell of his sax to create the deep,
throbbing whomp of a dubstep bassline. It's manic, and thrilling, and perhaps a little
bit evil.

They recorded their self-titled debut album at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn in the
space of one 24-hour period in June 2011. Their fanatical rehearsal regimen and
hours-long busking sessions had prepared them well; most of the 13 songs were
recorded in a single take. Previously only available direct from the band at a gig in
addiion to their relentless busking in the NYC subways, the band has toured America
extensively opening for the likes of Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing, Galactic, Lotus,
and They Might Be Giants - Moon Hooch's album will finally get wider distribution
this summer when it's re-released by Hornblow Recordings/Megaforce Records,
with a new song added for good measure.

Moon Hooch has a mission statement: 'As a band, we strive to use the universal
power of music to inspire connection between people, to influence a sustainable
culture in which basic human needs are met, and to contribute to the organification
of all aspects of our lives.' And every night, it's the same story: they take the stage
to a few hundred people who might have no idea what they're in for, and leave the
stage to the roar of a few hundred people who are going to tell all their friends the
next day, 'Dude, I saw something incredible last night.'