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Magnificent Beast review (Spring 2012)

Marching bands aren’t just about blaring horns and boosterism anymore. If, at their core, they might bring out the regimental soldier in all of us, then it’s the rhythm that speaks the loudest–whether you’re talking about the New Orleans-style second line or the latest hip-hop hybrid from Young Buck, Outkast or Kanye. Two recent albums accentuate how radically different the music can get, depending on who’s at the controls.

Oregon’s MarchFourth Marching Band (or M4) are the hip fusionists of the genre, folding occasional lead vocals and electric instruments into the latest studio outing, which was produced by Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin. The album borrow from ska (“Soldiers of the Mind”), Bollywood (“Delhi Belly”), rock (“Fuzzy Lentil”), dark zydeco blues (“Rose City Strut”) and more. “Fat Alberta” is M4 at its best–true to the percussive horn lines of the traditional march, and funky-as-all-get-out on the swing meter.

The idea of an album of marching-band music is pretty funny, but MarchFourth Marching Band doesn’t go for laughs in “Magnificent Beast,” as trombonists, trumpeters and sax players use their horns to build alluring melodies and throbbing beats. The group goes even brassier in “Rose City Strut,” as it’s joined by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s clarinetist, tenor saxophonist and tuba. The Preservation Hall band had come to Portland, Ore., home base for MarchFourth, for a joint concert last April; the New Orleans players agreed to improvise some solos for free if the recording could be made at the concert hall.

The horns push and pull, wail and oompah, share conversations and sometimes seem to have a difference of opinion, but always reunite in blissful harmony. The band was going for a dark, sultry mood, but an optimistic spirit is just as evident. The bah-BOMP-a-BOMP BOMP melody insinuates itself into the listener’s brain, while the pace is perfect for a stroll down the street. The song’s “Rose City” title calls out to a dancer named Rose who performs with the band, but it also functions as an homage to Portland’s nickname. Portland has many musical identities, but here, it sounds like the grooviest place in America.

NPR’s Song of the Day

Making whatever music you can
MarchFourth Marching Band is manically fun
By David Accomazzo

Start with a gritty New Orleans street-band influence — all fun, all music, all party. Throw in more musical influences than you can count, from Eastern European gypsy grass to George Clinton funk to Bugs Bunny cartoons, and you’re getting close. Add a sizable percussion section, fire breathers, jugglers, dancers, a healthy appreciation for marching band costumes and a sense of humor, and you begin to approach what MarchFourth Marching Band is all about.

It’s hard to describe MarchFourth Marching Band without seeing them live. (As band leader and bass player John Averill says, “We’re actually just kind of a marching band in disguise.”) The band’s latest album, the 2009 release Rise Up, sounds like a (stationary) big band with a drum corps, but the album’s tracks are so eclectic it’s hard to nail the sound into one particular genre. Averill, who spent most of the interview with Boulder Weekly following a fourfoot garter snake around Topanga Canyon, Calif., finds labeling the band’s music just as hard as the rest of us.

“Our sound has really evolved [since the band’s inception in 2003],” Averill says. “I think the initial ingredients that we had when we started were like Rebirth Brass Band, Fela Kuti, and definitely samba, and Eastern European gypsy-grass. Those were sort of the initial ingredients that we started with, then we started adding a lot more jazz and funk and rock since then. A lot of our newer material is pretty hard-hitting in a big dancey, funk-rock mode.”

It starts to make sense as you listen to the album.

The band has more than 40 people contributing when back home in Portland, Ore. — about 20 came along for the tour — and Averill says about 12 people write the band’s songs. That’s a lot of influences, especially considering how the band picked up many of the horn players after gigs.

“Most of the songs are written by the horn players.

And some of them have some really interesting elements that they’re putting together in these songs.

You go from some New Orleans funky thing to some almost math rock kind of thing to this gypsy breakdown. We have this one song that’s this sort of drum and bass with a cowboy sort of gallop. It’s all over the place,” Averill says.

Managing more than 20 people can no doubt be frustrating and challenging at times, but Averill manages to keep a cool head. It helps that the band is diva-free.

“I just try to guide where I think the project needs to go at any given moment,” Averill says. “It’s like a chariot being pulled by 20 horses or something. If the horses decide they want to go this way, all you can do is try to steer it.”

Rise Up’s opening track, “Ninth Ward Calling,” is straight New Orleans party funk — percussive hand clapping, multi-layered cascading horns, and the rough melodic chanting you get when instrumentalists try to sing, all tied together by creative horn fills. The “Sing, Sing, Sing”-inspired drums of “Dynomite” are so infectious they turn casual listeners into amateur tabletop drummers. “Nightmarika” sounds like the bastard offspring of the West Side Story “I like to live in America” riff and the harmonic minor scale. “Freestyle for Miles” shoots steroids into some classic Miles Davis tunes and blasts them out of the park, and “Powerhouse” is a loving cover of the instantly recognizable theme of every accident-prone factory ever to appear in a Looney Tunes cartoon. It’s a wild album, and it’s insanely fun to listen to.

6/3/2010

Read the whole article at Boulderweekly.com>>

[BRASS ’N’ BALLS] Some great live bands just can’t seem to capture their in-person energy on disc. “You have to see ’em live,” we tell friends, apologetically, when the CD doesn’t bring it. I was afraid that would happen with MarchFourth, whose joyous performances owe so much to the visual—and visceral—impact of so many big-horn toters and percussionists having so much fun, marching into the audience and throwing down. That ambience is notoriously hard to capture on a recording, as even masters like the Dirty Dozen Brass Band have discovered.

Of course, no CD could quite encode all of March’s costumed energy—much less its flag-twirlers, stilt-walkers, unicycles, fire eaters, puppets and other accomplices—in little digital bytes.

But Rise Up comes a lot closer than any of us had any right to expect. Sounding tighter than ever, the two- or three-dozen member collective has miraculously managed to channel its raucous sweat, swing and swagger for home and headphone. Newbies can enjoy this party-ready record for its own sake instead of just as a pale souvenir of a full color concert.

The disk presents almost the full range of M4’s diverse sounds—Mexican brass band (“Contada Ridiculata”), odd-meter Balkan party gypsies (“Simplon Cocek”), throwback Latin big-band jazz (“Dynomite”), classic funk (“Freestyle for Miles,” which owes as much to James Brown as to its namesake), New Orleans second line (“Ninth Ward Calling”), gospel rave up (“Gospel”) and unclassifiable hybrids. If Herb Alpert were still running the Tijuana Brass, “Happiness” would be the perfect cover.

Some proceeds from Rise Up go to Sweet Home New Orleans, a nonprofit organization that helps the damaged Crescent City’s music and cultural institutions recover from Katrina’s helluva Bush-whacking job. Fresh as Rise Up sounds, there’s no substitute for the full MarchFourth live experience—lucky for us, the band plays this week. BRETT CAMPBELL.

11/18/09 >> read the article on the wweek.com website

The staid reputation of marching bands has been upended in recent years by the wider exposure of the New Orleans brass band tradition as well as the general shift toward culture eclecticism. Witness Portland, Ore.’s MarchFourth Marching Band, for whom Crescent City funk is only the starting point. Melodious and rhythmic, M4 combines the hand-clapping urgency of horns and percussion with influences from Near East, the Balkans, Brazil and the Caribbean, along with a touch of swing and bop. Unlike the many bands that toss ingredients into the stew pot and hope for the best, M4’s blend of elements sounds entirely natural and electrifying.  –David Luhrssen

11/04/2009

One of the strongest rhythms around is the marching beat. It falls into the category of rousing rhythms such as hip-hop, rap, and rancheras in that a listener cannot escape its spell. This might be why marching bands grab our full attention as they parade down the street or into a sports stadium, getting everyone up on their feet, swaying and clapping along to the polyrhythms played on snares, bass drums and sometimes bells. Horns pierce over the top of the rhythmic cacophony and woodwinds contribute a swirling circus feel.

But some of us unfortunately remember those nerdy marching bands from high school and middle school—you know those poor musicians stuffed into wool costumes, marching in 80 degree weather with sweat dripping down their faces. Then the tuba players and those carrying the bass drums called out for mercy and sympathy.

Ah, but this is a new era where marching bands, at least one in particular, Portland’s March Fourth Marching Band, decked in whimsical costumes and combining the circus big ring with world music sensibilities. M4, known by their fans, has the rest of us thinking or re-thinking our concept of a marching band. Heavy on the brass, bass and drums, not to mention, stilt-walkers, M4 brings the Balkans to us, then mixes it with New Orleans jazz, gospel and all things cool and groovy.

Songs such as “Dynamite,” from M4’s independent release, “Rise Up,” recalls the The Tiptons Sax Quartet (from nearby Seattle) and lumped in with the opener, “Ninth Ward Calling,” listeners might find themselves on a plane New Orleans-bound. Whereas, “Contada Ridiculata” will have us all joining the circus and “Simplon Cocek” might remind us of that overdue trip to the Balkans.

I am not surprised that M4 hails from Portland. Similar to Seattle, the Pacific Northwestern city has had its share of successful do-it-yourself music ensembles. But a marching band from a region where it rains most of the time? That must be why the band packs up its bus and hits the road. With circus motifs, musical diversity and the do-it-yourself ethic, M4 and France’s Lo’Jo would get on famously.

10/22/09 Read the whole article at World Music Central’s website