Their last album featured here has barely cooled, yet we're getting another dose of MMW, this time a straight-up album, their debut for Blue Note from 1998. As mentioned before, the band was leaving their piano trio roots behind, and Mellotron, turntables (a la DJ Logic) and electric bass illustrate that on this album, which takes things a step further from 1996's Shack-man. Some the tracks will make your hair stand on end, particularly the DJ Logic stuff like "Sugar Craft", "Start-Stop", and "Church of Logic". I saw this firsthand when I would play this during evening shifts at the bookstore, which garnered customer reaction from "this is amazing" to the old woman who ran out of the store shouting "this is making me insane!" In the middle of all of this, there is still plenty of room to explore within the confines of the piano trio, as "Latin Shuffle" brilliantly illustrates in its first movement.
The Blue Note period was an ironic era for the band in that they were signed to a major jazz label and pushing the boundaries of the genre far more than they ever did for Gramavision. Even if Combustication seems straightforward enough, the remixed EP that followed the next year showed just how willing they were to push boundaries. Eventually they moved on to their own label, starting with a collaboration with John Scofield. A new album with Scofield, Juice, is due out later this year. If you don't count children's albums, live albums, experimental releases, or John Scofield, the last proper studio MMW album was End of the World Party (Just In Case), released 10 years ago!
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