Mop Mop: bastard performances of modern jazz, afro funk, soul music, etc

Mop Mop: bastard performances of modern jazz, afro funk, soul music, etc: Andrea Benini is a musician, music producer and composer from Cesena, Italy, and is more commonly known as Mop Mop, or at least the head of a changing group of musicians who use that name. In 2005, collective Mop Mop released an album of cool vibes, spare paino lines, tight grooves (5 sample tracks, streaming on Grooveshark). The group has changed over the years, releasing a total of four albums, with the most recent, Isle of Magic, containing 13 tracks of pure voodoo jazz, Caribbean flavors, Afro-funk, exotic rhythms and soul music.

Andrea Benini apparently picked the name Mpo Mop from a 1961 Dictionary of Jazz, which described Mop Mop as "...a bastard performance of modern jazz based on riffs looped till monotony..." Benini had been spinning and making music for a while, but Mop Mop formally started with a festival appearance in 2002, and in 2003, Andrea Benini and some collaborators recorded an album. It was finally released two years later as The 11th Pill, and was followed about three years later by a teaser for their next album. Kiss of Kali EP (MySpace stream) featured two remixes and three original tracks, which was expanded to an 11 track album (Bandcamp) by the same name. This album was a mix jazz music with a club flavor as well as incorporate his Italian roots. The label made a behind-the-scenes video, and you can see a clip of that here.



The third album, Ritual of the Savage (Bandcamp), was pure hypnotic Jazz, spiritual flavours, exotic Funk and Soul music influenced by Latin and African beats, continuing the evolution of the sound of Mop Mop. That lead up to Isle Of Magic (Bandcamp), which mixes a haze of vibraphone and flutes trill like a lost Martin Denny album with an unusual afro-european melange.



If that's not enough, here's more!

Let I Go, feat. Anthony Joseph, live at Club Der Visionäre in Berlin (YouTube, HD)
• Mop Mop mixes on Mixcloud, including an hour-long mix of Benini's favorite Bobby Hutcherson tracks
  
• Andrea Benini's Soundcloud page, with a seven hour long compilation of mixsets
  
• 11 Mop Mop reworks, free to stream from Bandcamp, and downloadable for whatever price you see fit