“BMSM might be one of my favorite bands on the planet. With a horn section to kill for, a drummer that can put me in a beat coma instantly, and a knack for hitting grooves in a pantsless stride, they aren’t easy to ignore,” writes Joel Frieders of SYFFAL.com and he’s not kidding. For a band without a lead singer, Big Mean Sound Machine has character in spades. When assembled from a selection of the finest, well-lubricated, musically brilliant human components, the final result is the aural equivalent of positive feeling, “…the embodiment of feeling… delicious,” writes Frieders. People dance when a rhythm moves them, and there’s no defying instinct when Big Mean Sound Machine is on stage.
Anyone who has experienced the band in action knows that their performances are the heaviest and sweatiest. “Incorporating Caribbean, African, and Latin sounds and everything in between, these musicians… sound as though they’ve been playing together since the sandbox days. They transition effortlessly from a collective of trombone, sax, and trumpet to riveting soloists. Then, there is heavy bass before… percussion, guitar, or keys take the limelight, and when [they’re] not playing simultaneously, those who are stepping aside are jamming out as if they were in the crowd with the rest of us,” writes Mary Mistretta of UpstateLIVE. A polyrhythmic monster with a crisp, constant, unrelenting groove, the band brings together many musical traditions in a unique blend that reinterprets and reanimates live dance music unlike any other band playing today.