By the time most popular bands approach making their tenth album, breaking boundaries is not easy. What's left to do? A set of standards? Duets? The ubiquitous Greatest Hits featuring two new songs? For improvisational trio Medeski Martin & Wood, this was not the challenge; thirteen years of creating music live together, on the spot, has ensured they rarely want for fresh ideas. No, what MMW sought for their latest, the sublime End Of The World Party (just in case), was a means of taking their ideas to the next level.

Towards that end, they opened up their creative circle to a new outside producer. "We were at a point where we were looking for a little more guidance and leadership," explains MMW drummer Billy Martin, noting that the democratic nature of the band can occasionally lead to stalemates and compromises, a predicament an outsider's presence would eliminate. Several candidates were considered, but in the end, the trio chose studio legend John King of the Dust Brothers (Beck, Beastie Boys) to help refine their musical vision.

The trio and King commenced work on End Of The World Party as MMW typically do, improvising at their Shacklyn Studios (in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood), while the tapes rolled, for a week. Since the band knew Martin's wife was due to deliver a new baby any day, capturing the rhythm section was the priority. "At first, John was focusing on drums," confirms bassist Chris Wood. He would isolate a particular bar of Martin's drumming he liked, loop it, and make it the foundation for a verse, then repeat the process with a similar, yet not identical bar, and fashion it into a chorus. "That's how he started making the songs form."

Yet as King's creative processes dovetailed with MMW's, his approach to recording the trio evolved. "As he got to know how we improvise, and move from point A to point B in a piece, he started to edit things together, preserving that organic sound of what we do as an ensemble," continues Wood. "He started leaving our improvisations more intact, but editing and shaping them, as opposed to just taking the drums, and creating song forms, and then having us overdub over that."

"You could see he was really hooked into special, particular grooves and rhythms, adds Martin. "That was his key thing. He influenced our playing in that way."

From there, King, Medeski, and Wood retired to the producer's studio, The Medina, in Los Feliz, CA (Martin stayed home to help care for his new son, who was born the morning after the final day of recording). As King refined the Brooklyn source materials, Medeski and Wood overdubbed additional parts, and files of the songs were dispatched back to NYC, where Martin augmented his percussion contributions. Guests including guitarist Marc Ribot, slide trumpet player Steve Bernstein (of Sex Mob) and saxophonist Briggan Kraus also contributed to individual tracks.

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