Moon Hooch – Super Cone Bros

One of several minimalist guerrilla saxo-funk units to emerge from the New York City subway system in the last decade, Moon Hooch are the toughest of the bunch. The sturdy low-end rumble of saxophonists Wenzl McGowen and Michael Wilbur, backed by drummer Ethan Snyder, borders on coercive, and does at times to darker places than their primarily party-oriented peers. That said, the new EP is a lot fun. A characteristic stunt of theirs is to stuff orange traffic cones – of the sort Montrealers recognize only too well – into their saxophones, to supercharge the blare. Super Cone Bros pays tribute to the penchant, while extending their sonic palette with judiciously applied electronics, nods to the video arcades and dirty downtown discos next door to the subway stations they once infested. It’s a trio of cavernous troglodyte stompers that occasionally flare up brightly with dashes of dancefloor fever.