WorldService Project, tour review: Jazz, but not as we know it

This was a gig that grabbed you by the scruff and didn’t let go, says Jane Cornwell
Rule breakers: WorldService Project
Jane Cornwell9 May 2016

Yelping puppies, shrieking parrots, the strangled squeaks of a hamster… and that was just the audience. Onstage, over howling sax and rampaging trombone, with keyboards clamouring, kit drums crashing and time signatures thrown around like birdseed, the five twenty-something members of WorldService Project were also hollering animal noises throughout live favourite, Fire In a Pet Shop.

It was jazz, but not as we know it ­— especially not on the track Mr Giggles, a demonic free-for-all that saw keyboardist/composer/founder Dave Morecroft cavorting in an evil clown mask, part Bill Evans, part Sid Wilson from Slipknot. The British quintet had donned Sergeant Pepper-style military outfits to launch their third album For King & Country, a rule-breaker that slaloms from prog-rock to punk, P-Funk to bebop, with a dark-humoured chaos that belies clever arrangements and heavy classical training.

With Morecroft driving proceedings from behind his keyboards, deploying a special effect here, wailing his voice like an instrument there, and with guest guitarist (and album producer) Chris Sharkey firing thrash-jazz riffs from his pale-blue Fender Mustang, this was a gig that grabbed you by the scruff and didn’t let go.

Highlights were many: lead single Fuming Duck was all careering melodies and slamming gothic bombast, while Requiem for a Worm was an exercise in delicate detail that built to a fuzzy, head-spinning crescendo. A gig that kicked jazz up the jacksy, then, and was all the more impressive for it.

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