Motherfuckers Jmb & Co Music Excitement Action Beauty

Meet Motherfuckers JMB & Co! J is for Jim, M is for Marc, B is for Brian. Motherfuckers is for...well, you'll have to hear that for yourself.
You might get an idea pretty quick once you're spinning Music Excitement Action Beauty. The trio's first full-length is a rocket of rhythm and atmosphere that fearlessly treks into vast sonic spaces. Drumbeats spread into constellations, bass pumps air into the sky, drones flare into clouds. Thick grooves drift in and out of focus, but there's always a central force to cling to as all the vapor-trails shoot past.
Decades of musical archaeology lurk behind this rainbow-hued swirl of psych, drone, improvisation, and ritual. Brian Weitz (hurdy gurdy) has spent 25 years crafting sound as Geologist in the ground-breaking quartet Animal Collective. Jim Thomson (drums) has been in scores of bands, from helping found Richmond art-metal legends GWAR, to jamming instrumentals in SST alums Alter-Natives (a fitting forebear to JMB's vocal-less jaunts), to driving the spirited dance-punk of Time Is Fire. Marc Minsker (bass, guitar, harmonium) has made music since the early 90s, initially in Third Eye Lounge (who backed legendary improviser Eugene Chadbourne), and later in myriad partnerships around the mid-Atlantic region.
The trio came together via old-fashioned community, in the always-fertile ground of the DC/Maryland/Virginia experimental scene. In 2018, Minsker and Weitz met at a mutual friend's birthday party. Bonding over shared obsessions (Sun City Girls, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282), they soon guested on each other's radio shows (Minsker at WOWD in Takoma Park, MD, Weitz on NTS in cyberspace) and traded creative ideas. In 2023, they performed together for the first time: Minsker on harmonium and Weitz on hurdy gurdy, both shrouded by a hanging tapestry.
Around the same time, Minsker met drummer Jim Thomson at a concert the latter organized for Baba Commandant & Mandingo Band at DC's Kennedy Center. Minsker invited Thomson to guest with a student/faculty band at the high school where Minsker works. This led to Thomson joining Minsker and Weitz for a show in Baltimore, MD. And thus, Motherfuckers JMB & Co were officially born. The name? Just Weitz's homage to German psych-groove band Xhol Caravan's 1972 album Motherfuckers GmbH & Co.
After a few more shows and even fewer rehearsals, the trio entered Tonal Park studios, armed with riffs and motifs that served as launching points rather than guidelines. Recordings took place during a single afternoon, with "lights lowered and incense and candles lit," as Thomson describes. Weitz edited the resulting material after a three-month break ("it’s good to forget the session a bit instead of making critical decisions where you’re still feeling proud of yourself," he explains), trimming down improvisations and reworking cut-out sections into seamless transitions. And now we have Music Excitement Action Beauty, seven cascading tracks that blend like ice cream flavors overfilling a cone.
Opening with the daybreak drone of "Rise," the trio shift into the steady-climb of Thomson's sturdy beat and Minsker's fluid bass loop in "Breakers Part 1." Weitz's spiraling hurdy-gurdy grows like moss around the rhythm, fading into "Strange Planet," a surf-psych mantra featuring a transfixing Minsker riff that twists like a snake. A sunny whirr coats the stereo space until "Breakers Part 2" emerges like Apocalypse Now's Captain Willard surfacing in the dark, sparking a high-speed jam that evokes Neu's motorik escapades.
Before you can breathe, the textured noise-quilt "Studio B" melts into the slow-burning groove of "Metro 29," in which Thomson's stutter-step drums and Minsker's twang rhyme with Weitz's high-pitched cycles. Everything coalesces in closer "Keep the Temp," a break-neck stomp that revs up with Thomson's dub siren, then slowly implodes into a dying star.
Throughout Music Excitement Action Beauty, there's a communal vibe–not just from the friends-through-friends connections of JMB, but also the larger environments they've moved in for years. There's a "Co." at the end of their name for a reason, as if Music Excitement Action Beauty was made by three on behalf of many more. "Every group I've played with was usually organically formed and informed by the community and friendships in some ways," says Thomson. "I was very attracted to playing with Marc and Brian because of the promise of repetition, drone, and psychedelia, and it delivered in spades."