"Each day, the earth generates numerous destructive and creative events, many of which go by unnoticed by humankind. Volcanoes erupt beneath the sea, glaciers advance and retreat, microorganisms mutate and adapt, yet only when these events disrupt our lives do we call them disasters. A disaster is an anthropological event measured in its human impact, avoidability or inevitability, and our response. Disasters lay bare our values and risk-acceptance: it is a choice to live in a flood zone, to extract natural resources, to rebuild, to make a free-jazz album... Mostly Other People Do the Killing has chosen to do just that: make audible the experience of disaster.

The partial meltdown of reactor number 2 at Three Mile Island in 1979, immortalized in the film masterpiece X-Men Origins: Wolverine by Gavin Hood, looms large in the high-cultural fabric of Pennsylvania. Bassist and composer Moppa Elliott's nuclear re-engineering of the bugaloo is audible in the contrapuntal melodic lines and finely honed electronic sounds, anticipating a future of [nuclear] fusion. Rather than explain the disaster, Elliott's composition imagines the event backwards, starting with the chaos and high-energy radiation of a nuclear meltdown and slowly achieves containment, as in the "bombs-in-reverse" sequence of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5.

The epic quest for fossil fuels and disregard of human safety in order to procure them rarely has had more dire results than the total catastrophe of the Knox Mine Disaster in Exeter, PA, in 1959. Just days before Miles Davis would record his masterpiece, Kind of Blue, in New York City, miners deep beneath the Wyoming Valley edged too close to the bed of the mighty Susquehanna River and blasted a hole in it, not only flooding the mines, but ultimately ending anthracite coal mining in the region. As the river water rushed into the mine, forming a giant whirlpool, workers resorted to dumping entire train cars into the void in a futile attempt to simulate a bathtub plug. The absurdity and tragedy of this underground Icarus event leap to melodic life in Elliott's tune -- a film-noir dirge evoking the search for survivors in the subterranean darkness and murk before fading to black.

The violent meeting of two oil tankers in the waters of the Delaware river near Marcus Hook caused a Cleveland-esque fire on the surface of the bay, released thousands of barrels of fuel into the water, and engulfed many innocent bystanders. The submarine consequences of just such a toxic spill have been previously explored by Talibam! in their seminal opera, Discover AtlantASS, providing drummer Kevin Shea a second opportunity to explore this crude theme. Elliott first states the languid melody, evocative of the laggard progress of the great ships, before giving way to a hymn-like requiem for the oil industry itself and drawing parallels to other disastrous, interpersonal collisions and conflagrations.

Wilkes-Barre, the childhood home of pianist Ron Stabinsky, was dealt a tragic double-blow by fate. A few years after the mine flood in nearby Exeter, hurricane Agnes brought a second, above-ground deluge to further decimate the city. The floodwaters, after breaching the levee system and completely submerging the city, left high-water marks on buildings fifteen feet up that remain visible decades later. The members of MOPDtK achieve similarly high marks for their rollicking performance of Elliott's complex composition. Like a cloudburst, the music begins in media res, flows through several thematic sections evoking the trauma of the event, and ends with Stabinsky's plaintive cries as he yearns to return to his childhood innocence.

In the funeral march, "Boyertown," we can imagine the procession of mourners returning to the Rhodes Opera House where a fire consumed so many members of their community in 1908. An audience expecting to be awed by a performance including a stereopticon found itself trapped when the lighting equipment ignited and emergency exits were not accessible. The fuel for MOPDtK's burning tune comes from Elliott's arco bass melody and the orchestral percussion orchestrated by Shea evoking not only Chopin, Berlioz, and Waits, but the jazz funeral parades of New Orleans, habanera rhythms of Cuba, and the ponderous acceptance of their fate by the Pennsylvania townspeople.

The ongoing mine fire smoldering beneath Centralia, PA, since 1962 has served as the basis of numerous films and video games, the artistic media of our century. The five remaining residents of the town, unfazed by the inferno raging beneath their feet, live amidst the pungent, acrid fumes that constantly seep from the ground. Rather than dwell in the Alighierian aspects of the fire, Elliott's "Centralia" is a celebration of escape, as though the trio were triumphantly leading the evacuation from a collapsing Appalachian mining town while fire, brimstone, and economic despair rain down around them.

Disasters often leave loneliness and isolation in their wake, evoked here by the cosmic sound-scape created by Shea and Stabinsky while Elliott serves as a lone voice calling out in the darkness. Johnstown, PA, has been destroyed by flood three times in its history, and in the face of all reason, rationality, and learning, residents still return, drawn by its natural beauty and the possibility that this time might turn out differently. With an average of 44 years between the previous floods (the last occurrence took place in 1977) is the city is due for another?

We expect coal and oil to burn, but when our tap water turns out to be flammable, there has been a terrifying paradigm shift. The hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" in and around Dimock, PA, created just that situation, documented in the film Gasland, in which a homeowner lights the water coming out of a kitchen faucet. Like hydrocarbons suspended in solution just waiting for a spark, the members of MOPDtK explode and burn through a series of melodies so familiar that they may have been present in the bedrock of music for eons. The half-time section that ends this composition clearly bids the audience farewell with the hope that you have enjoyed Mostly Other People Do the Killing's disastrous new album!"-Leonardo Featherweight, May 2021