Prefuse 73 plays Chop Suey with Four Tet and Beans at 9 p.m. Sat., Oct. 25. $12 adv.
FOUR TET
Rounds
(Domino)
The enduring image of Kieran Hebden comes from an early interview in The Wire in which the sole member of Four Tet was surrounded by his records: Sticky's two-step garage, bouzouki, Jay-Z, free jazz, Fairport Convention. Willful eclecticism in IDM is nothing new, and neither is Hebden's assertion that "when I'm in the country I want to be hearing electronic music." Ever since Boards of Canada, IDM has had an almost infantile fascination with the pastoral. But since the dissolution of his first band, British post-rockers Fridge, Hebden's Four Tet has grown into a kind of fidgety, not-yet-legal teenage-hood. He's got a decidedly rhythmic approach to fusing live textures with sampled electronics, from early singles like "Glasshead," which fit blaxploitation soundtracks into starched Krautrock jackets, to the astral jazz of the new Rounds. The album opens with "Hands," an ocean of arhythmic drum rolls and glitches that sounds like Fennesz remixing drummer Sunny Murray. Nothing else here quite equals "Hands," but Rounds covers more ground than any other IDM record this year: moonwalking breaks; mournful piano; bouncing-ball percussion; and forests of shimmering, humid, Alice Coltrane-style strings, chimes, cymbals, and rattles. This is something Four Tet does particularly well, bringing the cloudbursts of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's "little instruments" into the supposedly dry and arid world of the sequencer and sampler. A whole album of tracks like this, and he could have the whole piece of my fragile heart I'm still willing to give to IDM in 2003. J.H.
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Four Tet plays Chop Suey with Beans and Prefuse 73 at 9 p.m. Sat., Oct. 25. $12 adv.
ENTRANCE
Honey Moan
(Tiger Style)
Bitten by last year's "Devandra Banhart Is the New Syd Barrett" bug? Listen up: Entrance, the name Guy Blakeslee assumes when purveying his bluesy progressive folk, is easily as captivating, oddly immediate, and wonderfully alien as Banhartwhat's more, the two are friends. And while I believe it approaches blasphemy to make too close a correlation between either man and dear old Syd, I might be willing to accept that both are receiving transmissions from Barrett from some great beyondthough in Entrance's case, there may be other voices, too. On this four-tracked EP (a follow-up to his debut, The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken by Storm, released a mere nine months ago), Entrance covers a Robert Johnson tune ("Come On in My Kitchen") and credits country-blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson for the inspiration of another. A left-handed songwriter who relies almost solely on his regular right-handed guitar for accompaniment, Entrance plays upside downin a number of ways. In addition to the aforementioned literal one, his words convey a sense of overturned emotionsugly underbellies held up to office-cubicle fluorescents and then dissected with Southern-drawled shuffles, Barrett-like wavering, and hissing hums. The very mood of this stuff is upended; the blues have always sought to comfort, but only insofar as bare honesty and confrontation can communicate that comfort, and Entrance's reverence for those ideals is stated plainly and nicely nuanced. Though he's already played some pretty big rooms with notables like Will Oldham and Cat Power, a small stage should suit Entrance's weird intimacy and Blakeslee's nimble guitar fiddling just fine. LAURA CASSIDY
Entrance plays the Green Room at 9 p.m. Sun., Oct. 26. $6.
GRATKOWSKI/BRYERTON/SMITH
The Voice Imitator
(Balance Point Acoustics)
I am no expert on the European avant-garde, and I have a difficult time making it through the Outside Jazz show on KBCS. So I don't knowmaybe Frank Gratkowski's not doing anything so new or original. But it sure sounds good to me. His trio trades in the most fearless form of free jazz, building musical shapes out of utterly nothingabjuring not just melody, chords, and rhythm but all conventional ways of eliciting sound from this most conventional of jazz formats (sax, drums, bass). On woodwinds, Gratkowski is as likely to blow shifting gales of toneless wind through the bell of his horn as flutter, yelp, pip, or drone. The range of "effects" created on unadulterated instruments over the course of this 72-minute live disc by his accompanists, Bay Area bassist Damon Smith and Chicago drummer Jerome Bryerton, is equally amazingand yet the last thing they sound like is "effects." Instead, these six "instant compositions" show the trio emerging as a beautiful, willful, freakish noise organism. The easy out in free jazz is always to come on with an sq-wall of sound, but Gratkowski, Bryerton, and Smith are far bolder in their use of silence and spacenot a pretentious, listener-mocking silence, but a kind that's charged with openness and risk. It's as far "outside" as jazz gets, but anyone into sound for sound's sake will find it compelling. I sure couldn't turn it off. MARK D. FEFER
Gratkowski/Smith/Bryerton Trio play Polestar at 8 p.m. Sat., Oct. 25. $12. Part of Earshot Jazz Festival.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Wig in a BoxSongs From and Inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch
(Off)
Tribute albums are a risky affair. Compile one without care and you get something emotionally scarring, like 1995's Tapestry salute that let Celine Dion loose on classic Carole King. This new set, which high-fives the tunes for John Cameron Mitchell's transgendered cult hit, knows its territory, though, and is filled with voices that successfully work their way into the crevices of the glittering landscape. Cyndi Lauper goes positively ape-shit on the anthemic "Midnight Radio," clinging magnificently to the "e" in "me" like her career depended on it, and that kind of personal desperation is just right for the proceedingscomposer Stephen Trask's gems are crafted with such universal longing that they're easily removed from their gender-bending setting. Even cuts not too dissimilar from the originalslike the Breeders' hushed, tender take on "Wicked Little Town"seem to find something private to say. The choicest bits are downright inspired: Frank Black gambols headlong through "Sugar Daddy" as though it were the most deliciously dirty thing he'd ever heard ("You buy me that dress/I'll be more woman than a man like you can stand"); Sleater-Kinney, with an assist from a typically perverse Fred Schneider, bite down hard on "Angry Inch"; and the Polyphonic Spree envision "Wig in a Box" as the "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah" David Bowie never recorded, complete with brass, theremin, and blissful la-la-las. There's even a new tune ("Milford Lake") composed and performed by Trask and Cameron Mitchell. It's all proof that Trask's rock musical score is among the best rock and perhaps the most enduring musical material created in the last few years. STEVE WIECKING
Sunset Tavern hosts the Hedwig and the Angry Inch Tribute Night, featuring Nick Garrison, Erin Jorgenson, and others at 9 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 23. $5.
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