My Challenger by Turbo World

“You're not there to play games, you're not there to decide why he should die. Somebody already decided he's gonna die.”

A burly man with a thick Brooklyn accent twirls idly in his swivel chair. He’s wearing a black executioner’s hood with a slit cut for his mouth to avoid muffling, but it makes for a duck-like profile. It’s 1973 and he’s sitting across from talk show pioneer David Susskind. He goes by Joey (though his real name is Max Kurschner) and he’s there to discuss his book Killer, an autobiography about his work as a mafia hitman. For the next hour, he casually regales the live studio audience with details of his 38 hits, among other crimes, all while his stodgy host repeatedly goads him to admit he feels guilt over his crimes.

This is the source material for Turbo World’s debut album, My Challenger, a surreal, animated prog-opera entrenched in the world of organized crime. Loosely structured as an interview (and borrowing liberally from Joey’s) these nine tracks create a fractured portrait of a mafioso jack-of-all-trades. The band is led by Stephen Cooper, a composer and multi-instrumentalist best known as the mastermind behind avant-prog boppers Cloud Becomes Your Hand and a member of Guerilla Toss, and Caroline Bennett, a singer, lyricist, and multi-media wizard behind digital hardcore duo Stice. Turbo World soon became a fully fledged rock outfit with the addition of friends and frequent collaborators: Stice’s other half Jake Lichter on keys, Calvin Grad on kit and Ryan Power on bass.

Cooper knows the allure of a good mob story well; he undertook a deep mob history binge years back, reading up on major figures, watching documentaries, and tumbling down all the YouTube rabbit holes he could find. All the elements of high drama were there: honor and dishonor, loyalty and treachery, petty crimes and bloody misdeeds. That, and it was all real. The stories he’d absorbed over the years were on his mind when it came time to plot his next musical endeavor, a collaboration with Bennett, who had fatefully joined CBYH to write and sing the lyrics on the last song of their last album, 2016’s Rest in Fleas. The pair shared an obsession with themes of crime and betrayal and toyed with the idea of a mafia-centric album, but weren’t sure how best to channel such played out subject matter into their outré sensibilities. It was only when Cooper discovered Joey’s interview that everything fell into place.

Fans of CBYH will feel an instant connection to this music as Cooper continues to stand out for his madcap compositions, embodying the playful spirit and adventurous compositional ethos of avant rock groups Aksak Maboul & Slapp Happy. This manic musical energy is well-matched by Bennett’s lyrics, deliriously shifting from mundane to high-octane to the completely hallucinatory. The result is a singular, playfully grandiose album that pits the impish complexities of its music against the intensity of its subject matter to powerful effect.

Opener “20K” and its carnivalesque, cascading synths gleefully clash with Bennett’s deadpan, business-like delivery as she lays down the core tenet of Joey’s craft. Need someone taken care of? Want it done right? That’ll be $20K. “That’s how much it costs for some good foul play.” From there we descend further into the criminal underworld, exploring the numerous side hustles of Joey and his compatriots. “Cards” reconfigures a high-stakes poker game into a heart-pounding prog jam; “Mambo 62” breathlessly tracks a tussle between rival thieves, riding an uptempo groove and killer sax work; the title track takes listeners on drug runs back and forth across the border, vacillating between tense and shimmering synth lines with each successful pass. Even as our (anti-)hero keeps coming out on top, there’s a creeping sense of anxiety in lyrical asides and minor key musical turns, hinting at the ambivalence that can grip even the most hardened among us.

For all of Susskind’s needling, Joey never cops to feeling any guilt for the bodies in his wake. To him it’s just a job. “​​If this business hadn’t been available I'd have gone into something else,” he claims. Whether or not there’s truth to that, something more telling comes to light towards the end of the interview. When finally asked the burning questions – Why write this book? Go on TV? Put a target on your back? – his response is surprisingly progressive, if tragically naive: “A lot of the things that we are into can be legalized, and the money derived from this could all but eliminate all your sales tax… build your schools and your hospitals and your roads, and you could have enough money left over to take care of all the people on welfare.” As resigned as he is to his role in this world, he can’t help but imagine a better one.

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Turbo World is the sunny and shady brainchild of co-conspirators Stephe Cooper (Cloud Becomes Your Hand) and Caroline Bennett (Stice). Their debut album, My Challenger, are 9 songs that lead listeners on a surreal, animated jaunt through the world of organized crime.