"Initially," Daniel explains, "the hip-hop idea came across to us from the title track. And also ‘Lorelei’ from their third album Treasure. Those were our blueprints. When we told Robin [Guthrie] that, he was like, ‘What are you talking about? That’s not hip-hop.’ I was like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’" Originally from Raleigh, N.C., Daniel and Danny Chavis moved to New York in 1989 when The Veldt signed with Mother Love Bone’s Stardog label after generating buzz in the Chapel Hill area. Laughing, Danny calls the move "a big mistake." In retrospect, both of them feel it would have been better to stay put and build their following. Both speak disparagingly of their major-label experience. In fact, the band had already been dropped by Capitol before its run with Stardog, which in turn released only one full-length, 1994′s Afrodisiac. By that time, The Veldt’s up-tempo alterna-gaze had already landed the group an opening slot on a 1990 The Jesus & Mary Chain tour and, more impressively, caught the attention of Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, the brothers’ biggest idol. In 1989, Guthrie took the fledgling brothers under his wing and produced some of the earliest Veldt recordings, which were shelved by Capitol but have recently resurfaced on White Music for Black People.

"Robin gave us our first drink," chuckles Daniel. "We were 23, but we’re from a Baptist family, so we’d never touched alcohol. Our first night in England, he tricked me by giving me apple cider. After that we became complete drunks!" "Everything I’ve learned about recording," Danny gushes, "I’ve learned from him."

White Music features guest appearances by Mos Def, Dave Sitek and Lady Miss Kier, as well as key contributions from Apollo Heights’ revolving cast of side players (most notably, bassist/programmer Hayato Nakao, who co-wrote and mixed the contemporary tunes). Because it spans 18 years’ worth of work, the album documents Danny’s development as a sound architect. The rippling, washed out guitars remain a trademark, but it’s also clear that he prefers a spare approach to layering. During shoegaze’s infancy, production limits dictated how full the music could sound. But three recent Apollo Heights demos, most likely bound for an upcoming album titled The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur, leave no doubt about the band’s ability to create space on purpose.

Rather than saturate the songs with heaps of guitars like, say, My Bloody Valentine, Apollo Heights keeps its guitars comparatively thin. At times, the various lines—often limited to just two—sound like twirling sea snakes chasing each other across the stereo field. The newer material also shows a great leap forward in terms of production. The beats still follow a prototypical hip-hop mold, but they’re more elaborately finessed. The snare hits, for example, no longer sound like robotic stabs into cold, featureless air. Similarly, explosions of artificial bass amount to more than just huge, low-end frequency burps meant to knock you on your ass, and instead spread across the music with much apparent care given to their sonic color, texture and shape. Everything hangs suspended in place like pieces in a vivid puzzle of moving parts.

"What we’re doing now," says Daniel, "is what The Veldt had intended to do from the very beginning."

–
Apollo Heights
Jan. 23, Lit Lounge, 93 2nd Ave. (betw. E. 5th & E. 6th Sts.)
212-777-7987; 11, TBA

BARELY SIX MONTHS after unveiling All Is Golden, the debut album from Pronto, his brainchild group and home away from Wilco, Mikael Jorgensen threw listeners a curveball earlier this month by releasing a collection of older material as an album titled The Cheetah. A prequel to Golden, The Cheetah contains work that dates back to the year 2000—before Jorgensen was an official member of Wilco. And while the majority of listeners might still be adjusting to hearing Jorgensen’s songwriting front-and-center (not to mention his charmingly green vocals, which he himself calls “wonky”), Jorgensen is still trying to fathom where the band might go from here. And he doesn’t feel particularly bound to any one mode of presentation. Already, Pronto has veered from duo to quartet and back in several different configurations— and will probably continue to do so.

“I see Pronto as more of a container than a brand,” he says.

If Jorgensen is figuring out the band’s identity as he goes along, then The Cheetah allows listeners to be in on the process in something akin to real time. In contrast to the hooks and thick, analog-heavy arrangements that fill All Is Golden, the Cheetah material contains little singing and showcases Jorgensen’s affinity for Spartan, computer-based atmospheres. For the bulk of the tracks, Jorgensen and collaborator Chris Girard laid down the main sonic architecture, which was soon thereafter augmented by drummer Greg O’Keefe. But, when the band hits the stage as a four-piece for its New York show, the new arrangements for the stuff on The Cheetah will be roughly two weeks old, worked out in time-sensitive rehearsals.

“My ultimate goal,” says Jorgensen, “is to try to somehow or other weave the two worlds together.”

And therein lies the fundamental musical challenge that has occupied Jorgensen since 1984, when, as a New Jersey youth, he first began tinkering with hand-me-down gear from smooth-jazz legend Bob James . Since then, through the time he first formed a band with O’Keefe in Jersey, moved to Chicago, worked at producer/Tortoise founder John McEntire’s SOMA studio, first worked with Girard (also in Chicago) and began working with Wilco, Jorgensen has had a back-and-forth relationship with electronic music. He has long sought a middle ground between electronic- and instrumental-based music, to integrate them so that the results sound organic.

“I’m trying to find a way,” he says, “that these computer-based techniques can be more dynamically part of a band playing. I think what it comes down to is the Karaoke effect, where I don’t want to just have the computer onstage and I’m triggering stuff, but for all the audience knows it could just be an iTunes playlist or I’m up there checking my email.

“There should be stickers,” he adds, “that say No, I’m not checking my email for people who use laptops live.”

Perhaps surprisingly, when it comes to live performance, Jorgensen is reluctant to incorporate electronics that dictate the tempo.

“That raises the question,” he offers, “of ‘is that really playing music or is it just playing along to something?’ If you submit to it, it opens up a whole other area of possibility. But then, if some technical glitch happens, and Greg starts playing and the beat gets lost and he’s playing in a different tempo than the pre-recorded track, all these stupid logistical issues come up.”

So listeners don’t need to worry about having to sit through literal interpretations of The Cheetah.

“The good thing,” laughs Jorgensen, “is that we can’t even do a literal reproduction, because for the original ProTools sessions of some of those songs, I don’t even know where the hell they are.”

Jorgensen in fact prefers to have the band’s shows reflect the idiosyncratic aspects of each member’s playing. And where Wilco operates on a level of large-scale micromanagement, time constraints have created an atmosphere of forced, learn-as-you-go spontaneity that Jorgensen has grown comfortable with when it comes to Pronto.

“After having the last round of shows [this past Spring],” he says, “and more or less knowing what to expect in terms of brain farts and mistakes, I’m more ready for unexpected stuff to happen during the shows, instead of this script that has to be performed relatively accurately.”

> Pronto

Sept. 23, Union Hall, 702 Union St. (at 5th Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-638-4400; 7:30, $10

“I see Pronto as more of a container than a brand,” he says.

If Jorgensen is figuring out the band’s identity as he goes along, then The Cheetah allows listeners to be in on the process in something akin to real time. In contrast to the hooks and thick, analog-heavy arrangements that fill All Is Golden, the Cheetah material contains little singing and showcases Jorgensen’s affinity for Spartan, computer-based atmospheres. For the bulk of the tracks, Jorgensen and collaborator Chris Girard laid down the main sonic architecture, which was soon thereafter augmented by drummer Greg O’Keefe. But, when the band hits the stage as a four-piece for its New York show, the new arrangements for the stuff on The Cheetah will be roughly two weeks old, worked out in time-sensitive rehearsals.
“My ultimate goal,” says Jorgensen, “is to try to somehow or other weave the two worlds together.”

And therein lies the fundamental musical challenge that has occupied—maybe even plagued—Jorgensen since 1984, when, as a New Jersey youth, he first began tinkering with hand-me-down gear from smooth-jazz legend Bob James (Jorgensen’s father was his longtime engineer). Since then, through the time he first formed a band with O’Keefe in Jersey, moved to Chicago, worked at producer/Tortoise founder John McEntire’s SOMA studio, first worked with Girard (also in Chicago) and began working with Wilco, Jorgensen has had a back-and-forth relationship with electronic music. He has long sought a middle ground between electronic- and instrumental-based music, to integrate them so that the results sound organic. He continues to seek that middle ground on his own terms, even as so many others, including Wilco, have found happy mediums of their own.

“I’m trying to find a way,” he says, “that these computer-based techniques can be more dynamically part of a band playing. And it’s been really difficult for me, for whatever reason. I think what it comes down to is the Karaoke effect, where I don’t want to just have the computer onstage and I’m triggering stuff, but for all the audience knows it could just be an iTunes playlist or I’m up there checking my e-mail.

“There should be stickers,” he adds, “that say No, I’m not checking my e-mail for people who use laptops live. It would be a really good merch idea.”
Perhaps surprisingly, when it comes to live performance, Jorgensen is reluctant to incorporate electronics that dictate the tempo.

“That raises the question,” he offers, “of ‘is that really playing music or is it just playing along to something?’ If you submit to it, it opens up a whole other area of possibility. But then, if some technical glitch happens, and Greg starts playing and the beat gets lost and he’s playing in a different tempo than the pre-recorded track, all these stupid logistical issues come up.”
So listeners don’t need to worry about having to sit through literal interpretations of The Cheetah.

“The good thing,” laughs Jorgensen, “is that we can’t even do a literal reproduction, because for the original ProTools sessions of some of those songs, I don’t even know where the hell they are.”

Jorgensen in fact prefers to have the band’s shows reflect the idiosyncratic aspects of each member’s playing. And, where Wilco operates on a level of large-scale micromanagement, time constraints have created an atmosphere of forced, learn-as-you-go spontaneity that Jorgensen has grown comfortable with when it comes to Pronto.

“After having the last round of shows [this past Spring],” he says, “and more or less knowing what to expect in terms of brain farts and mistakes, I’m more ready for unexpected stuff to happen during the shows, instead of this script that has to be performed relatively accurately.”

>Pronto
Sept. 23, Union Hall, 702 Union St. (at 5th Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-638-4400; 7:30, $10

Once again, the Norwegian electro-rock outfit’s creative nucleus, bandleader Fredrik Saroea and co-founder Ketil Mosnes, have a free-for-all making blatant pop-culture references. In one form or another, Michael Jackson, David Byrne, Molly Ringwald and her late chaperone John Hughes all make red-carpet appearances on Red’s crowded dance floor. And whether they’re referenced in the songs or the videos, you can see them coming a mile away.Then there’s the band’s Devo-inspired visual aesthetic (the members of Devo are approving fans) and fascination with primitive computer technology, all of which appear to serve a mission to make the music sound dated on purpose. On Red, much like the band’s 2005 debut Datarock Datarock, thick synths and Spartan beats are custom-designed to get the audience to party like it’s 1979.

So, as the album commences with its nod to Purple Rain, listeners should expect another intentionally clumsy homage to the dawn of the information age as an excuse for orgiastic celebration of sweat and technology, right?

Not exactly. Sure, in concert, the track-suited band (now expanded to a quartet) goes the extra mile to get you to move your ass.The music, which benefits greatly from the increased density of a live setting, is certainly invigorating enough, and it’s hard to resist following the band’s example as they leap and bound all over the stage.

But Saroea (AKA Rock Steady Freddy) insists that there’s more to Datarock than simple retro-futurist disco camp. And, if you stop shaking it long enough to pay attention, the proof lies right there in the music. Indeed, Saroea and Mosnes (who shares in the writing and creative direction but no longer tours with the band) manage to turn the familiar vocabulary of 1980s pop flotsam into a dialect all their own. Somehow, their winking, tongue-in-cheek style swerves just short of irony, which in high enough doses would certainly date the music, all right—to right now.

It should be considered no small feat that Datarock has avoided the predictable fate of flash-in-the-pan novelty when the band’s main goals have been to get the audience sweating first and laughing second, all while wearing funny costumes. But Saroea maintains that he’s trying to provoke thought too. If you listen hard enough, he says, you’ll hear suggestions of The Fall,Yellow Magic Orchestra and Thomas Dolby’s production work lurking within the grooves.

“On this album,” Saroea explains, “we really felt a lot of pressure to be that sunny band that references John Hughes films. He just passed away, so with all due respect, that’s not really what we’re all about.We wanted to somehow keep that theme intact and change it around a little, and themeicize the late ‘70s, early ‘80s in a different way. Because the early ‘80s weren’t really about Cyndi Lauper or Madonna. Just like the ‘90s weren’t about Britney Spears.”

Datarock’s obviousness does not, as it turns out, mask a deeper cynicism. In fact, Saroea is anything but ironic about the future.

“In the process of making this album,” says Saroea, who at 33 is old enough to remember life before the Internet, “I realized how insanely exciting a period of time in cultural evolution that period was. Some of the groundbreaking stuff that was going on back then has fully blossomed now. I very vividly remember when I got my first computer, which was a Sharp MZ-700, and then a Commodore 64.We had some imagination of what the computer age would be, but modern life is beyond the wettest dreams of any computer geek in the early ’80s!”

> Datarock

Sept. 17, Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-414-5994; 8, $15

“THAT’S THE THING,” says drummer E.J. Strickland, “I don’t play any differently when I’m backing him versus when I’m leading.”

The “him” he is referring to would be his twin brother, saxophonist Marcus Strickland. Although it isn’t much of a surprise that E.J. would feel at ease sublimating the concept of the leader with his twin brother at his side, E.J.’s all-for-one ethic has been shaped largely by his tenure in the Ravi Coltrane Quartet, which—unusually for jazz—has maintained a consistent lineup since 2002. For E.J., surrender to the music is paramount, and he expects bandleaders to feel the same. “I never feel like any one person is backing another person,” he says. “A group is a group.”

Unsurprisingly, the music on E.J.’s first album as a leader, In This Day, hardly sounds “drummer-centric.” E.J. does sometimes compose from the drums up, and is especially drawn these days to the complex, interlocking ensemble-rhythm patterns of traditional music from Ghana. But he tends to model his phrases after a horn. And, much like his key influences—Elvin Jones and Tony Williams among them—E.J. approaches the drum kit from an orchestral perspective. But he also goes a step further than his forbearers in the way that his technical proficiency serves his sense of subtlety and finesse. E.J.’s drumming sounds less like our standard notion of percussion and more like a mist that hovers in the music; when exposed to the light, it reveals a world of delicate inter-relationships and microcosmic possibilities.

In This Day is being released by Strick Muzik, Marcus’s label, in tandem with Idiosyncrasies, Marcus’s fourth venture as a bandleader. Both twins play on each other’s records and in each other’s bands, which both appear, fittingly enough, on the same night to commemorate the two releases. Between the two albums, the Stricklands, who turned 30 this year, highlight some exciting new developments in the forward momentum of jazz. It may take years for the various visions being conceived by their generation of players to come to full bloom, but E.J. and Marcus Strickland clearly stand at the cusp of something fresh. Their vision of what jazz can become offers a much-needed alternative to the tradition-vs.-innovation mind-set.

It’s telling, for example, that although Marcus Strickland’s trio devotes half of Idiosyncrasies to covers, the fact that he’s searching for something still burns through. For source material, Marcus honed-in on songs that were near and dear to him by Stevie Wonder, Andre 3000 and Bjork, artists known for relying heavily on production and layering. He then pared them down to their “bare essentials.”

“The first thing that comes to my mind is the bass line,” he explains. “If you listen to caption James Jamerson and the way those classic songs would come alive when he came up with a bass line, he would put motion into these songs that were otherwise just a lead sheet. My style comes out of that kind of thinking.”

Space, Marcus explains, serves an essential purpose on Idiosyncrasies.

“There’s no piano behind me to propel the solo,” says Marcus, “so there’s a vacuum. The most common thing people do is try and fill the vacuum, but what we’re trying to do is use the vacuum to our advantage.”

It is nonetheless clear that the Stricklands have a knack for distilling music of complexity into something that’s easy for any listener to grasp. Marcus feels that jazz musicians can sometimes “miss the point of this whole music thing, which is to reach people other than ourselves…I’m trying to make memorable jazz tunes."

But don’t get the wrong idea. Both he and E.J. approach their music with an extraordinary cerebral intensity that recalls the thrilling rush of the post-bop era. And much like the musicians of that time, the Stricklands know how to harness their chops rather than just show off. They’ve also managed to modernize post-bop sensibilities without pandering to the syrupy R&B and hip-hop clichés that have snagged some of their predecessors. With their impeccable sense of balance, they also show that true cooperation is possible even in a style of music distinguished by its hierarchical structure and sharp philosophical divisions.

> E.J. Strickland Quintet & Marcus Strickland Trio

Aug. 21, Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Astor Pl. & E. 4th St.), 212-539-8777; 8:30, $20

After all, the band’s 2007 album was named Dandelion Gum, of all things, and features a multi-colored album cover that, no matter how much you try and rationalize it, looks suspiciously like the very state of mind people slip things on their tongues to achieve. Not to mention that Black Moth’s music sounds like the perfect soundtrack for self-induced bouts of solitary head-expansion, if you will. For the record, Tobacco says he’s not a drug user and that he’s not interested in making music for a drug experience. But if his insistence that everything he makes is pop came across as evasive in the past, it won’t anymore, with the release of the new album Eating Us.

“My music isn’t like what usually gets categorized as pop,” says Tobacco, “but it’s supposed to sound like catchy melodies and colors—at least to me.”

With Eating Us,Tobacco (who plays almost all of Black Moth’s music himself and doesn’t divulge his real name so as to avoid getting into trouble at his job) may succeed in clearing up any misunderstandings about his work once and for all. A dreamy, hook-filled affair, Eating Us sounds not unlike like vintage California AM pop rock when you strip away the surface strangeness. On certain songs, such as “Golden Splatter,” you can practically hear the Pacific Coast glimmering in the background. And where previous Black Moth music centered on repetition and texture (and did, at times, sound like it was designed to give folks in skinny jeans bad trips) this time Tobacco and producer Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, Longwave) made it a point to let the melodies shine. Apparently, actual songs have always been hiding in Tobacco’s writing the whole time.

“I’ve been able to rely on textures and weird production more,” he explains. “I wanted to work with Fridmann to see if these songs could stand up to a more traditional treatment. Not that he’s a traditional producer, but compared to what I’m doing he is a lot more traditional.”

Unsurprisingly, given Fridmann’s body of work, the producer helped Tobacco craft an album that is at once sonically distinct yet direct.The acoustic instrumentation that Tobacco would have buried in the past is clearly discernible, for example, as are his lyrics. He still sings through the vocoder the entire time, but the vocals no longer skirt the line of gimmickry. Much like a guitar player who eventually masters a delay pedal and uses it artfully rather than hiding behind it, Tobacco was able to rein in the effect. On Eating Us, he no longer sounds like he’s trying to avoid singing, or like he can’t be bothered with it. Here, he explores new avenues of harmony that would otherwise have not been available to him and actually makes a fresh contribution to singing as an art form.

Still, no matter how much he’s moving in an accessible direction, listeners might be shocked to know that one of his biggest influences is Stone Temple Pilots.

“I’ve never been ironic about that kind of stuff,” he says. “We get lumped in with the Pitchfork bands, so people assume that that’s what I listen to. I like to find new music, but I can’t say I’m a Pitchfork music fan.”

Again, it might seem like Tobacco is merely trying to keep a comfortable distance from indie-rock trend chasers, but he may have found the most genuine way to stay ahead of the curve—by breaking up Black Moth. Yes, Pitchfork readers, this may be the band’s last run.

“I always set out to achieve something,” he says, “and once it’s achieved, then I don’t really know where to go from there.With Black Moth records, as soon as I finish one, I’ve always got one I’m already deep into.This time around, I’ve got no ideas. I’ve got nothing.”

> Black Moth Super Rainbow

July 24, Pier 17, South Street Seaport; 6, FREE

Essentially an attempt to convey nature in sound, Generations was conceived as one continuous piece of music. Within it, Okazaki attempts to recreate the feeling of natural processes (gravity, momentum, symmetry, cycles of birth and death, regeneration) by employing musical forms based on mathematical intervals common to nature and physics. At the same time, Okazaki has crafted a work that does not demand that the listener be aware of his underlying thought process. In fact, one way to remain faithful to Okazaki’s intentions is to not think about them at all.
And he manages to avoid burdening the music by filling it with, well, life. Like the ant colony under the proverbial rock, Generations teems with activity as Okazaki and the other players suggest moods and images that are easy to grasp for anyone who’s ever just sat under a tree or gazed at a body of water.

To do this, of course, requires musicians who are fluent in mathematical complexity. But math, Okazaki points out, is in a sense inconsequential to nature.

“Math,” he offers, “is just what we use to describe these things. But from the point of view of nature, the tree is probably not thinking about math.”

For Okazaki, it’s clearly possible for musicians to walk a line between the cerebral and the intuitive.

“Music basically is math,” he clarifies. “When it comes down to it, it consists of waves that are going at a certain speed hitting your ear and all this stuff. We’re dealing with mathematical phenomena. But if you can plant a garden in perfect straight rows and come back 10 years later, it’s going to be wild and crazy.”

Generations does get wild and crazy. Certain passages sound like mini-soundtracks to the scurrying of thousands of tiny feet, the band touching on the relentless, explosive chaos unfolding all around us in the natural world. Serene in spots, Generations also echoes the dark tension of, say, Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien score. It’s no surprise that, as a Pacific Northwest native, Okazaki spent a great deal of time observing nature. Originally from a small waterfront town 50 miles northwest of Seattle, Okazaki discovered jazz as an adolescent before moving east in 1991 as a young “jazz snob” oblivious to Seattle’s famous rock exports.

After spending most of his career backing tradition-oriented jazz vocalists, Okazaki has turned to a more innovative approach on his own. On Generations, singer Jen Shyu (whom Okazaki, drummer Dan Weiss and alto saxophonist David Binney also back in her band Jade Tongue) sings mostly without words. This technique is, of course, not new unto itself, but Okazaki and Shyu’s distinct touch suggests that jazz might be moving forward from the rigid bipolarity that continues to define the genre’s relationship with singing.

“With Jen,” explains Okazaki, “my intention was to not go to the default thing. Already, some people who have listened to the record are like, ‘Why is the singer buried in the mix?’ I did that very purposely, and she wanted that as well.”

Yet Shyu’s vocals don’t fall easily under the avant-garde umbrella either. Mostly, her phrases flow as smoothly as water, and Okazaki is careful to avoid preoccupying the listener with her technique. He displays a similarly deft touch with the music overall, citing DNA as an analogy.

“With DNA,” says Okazaki, “there are some very simple rules that combine in very complex ways. But you can see a human and you know that it is a human. I’m trying to do something like that in music.”

>Miles Okazaki
June 12 and 13, The Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson St. (betw. Dominick & Spring Sts.), 212-242-1063; times vary, $15

DON’T KNOW WHAT a “wavering radiant” is? Well, join the club. But you can still appreciate Wavering Radiant, the fifth and latest album from Isis.

As fans have come to expect, the album contains a thematic thread, although bandleader and Hydra Head Records founder Aaron Turner is refusing to divulge what it is. In fact, he won’t even discuss the lyrics or even shed light on what inspired the title. As he explained on a March Headbanger’s Ball podcast, he wishes to preserve his emotional and intellectual connection to the music, and talking about it in interviews wears down that connection. For now,Turner says he’s saving it so he can bring more energy to playing live.

Listeners will just have to fumble their way through Wavering Radiant in the dark, which perfectly suits the band’s brooding sound.The sense of mystery, in fact, only heightens the experience, as it allows the images to germinate and take shape over time in a way that mirrors the music’s slow-building tension. Arguably, previous Isis records have lumbered under the weight of Turner’s concepts. But the haunted shadows lying in wait within Wavering Radiant’s detailed folds provide nooks, crannies and dark corners galore for the imagination to fill in the blanks. And when the music opens up into expansive sonic vistas, the band achieves an elegance that verges on the pastoral.

Much like Tool and Neurosis—both key influences—Isis has always managed to keep one foot in the realm of metal. And the band, originally from Boston and now based in L.A., now gets to enjoy a kind of clichéexempt status, unencumbered by the baggage normally associated with metal. But perhaps most importantly, it’s able to reach audiences across genre boundaries.

Not that Isis hasn’t earned it. By blending elements of prog, ambient, drone and hardcore with heavy guitars and death metal–style growling vocals, Isis forges a distinct post-metal alloy. And, as the band meanders through the many drawn-out passages on Wavering Radiant, it achieves nuance in the way it casts subtle shades of darkness and light, as well as the expected advances in how to render texture, color and mood with increased finesse.

“To me,” says guitarist Michael Gallagher, “the new material follows our for mula somewhat, but I think there’s enough deviation from that. It’s quiet… a little less quiet… loud.There’s a lot of that, but we threw some curveballs in there too.”

Wavering Radiant sees Isis exerting, and arguably still searching for, more command in the way it transcends the binary, Nivanaesque loud-soft dynamic so common to heavy bands that prominently feature melody. Isis brings a more refined palette to the table and suggests that loud and quiet and soft and heavy actually exist on a continuum, with infinite points between them, as opposed to mutually exclusive poles. Additionally, the band focuses on interplay more than ever before, for what Turner describes as an “orchestral” kind of density, rather than the more typical, stacked-guitars brand of thickness it usually employed in the past. And, somewhat shocking for a band known for its meticulousness, Wavering Radiant captures Isis embracing a more loose approach. Although the bulk of the material was worked out before entering the studio, the band didn’t have a game plan, worked intentionally without a deadline and tended toward spirit over precision.

“The record sounds more live,” says Gallagher, “a little bit dirtier—almost, for lack of a better word, sloppy. But in a good way.We spent a lot of time getting all of our takes as close to perfect as we could on previous records. On this one, we went more with the vibe of the particular take in question. I thought that was an interesting way to go about it, seeing as we haven’t tried that before.”

Meanwhile, fans that insist on having the band’s help in “getting” the album need not worry.Turner’s vocals are higher in the mix, and Gallagher says the band eventually plans to disclose the lyrics.

“If you’re that interested that you want to chase after it,” he says, “it’s more important to us that you come to your own deductions.”

> Isis

June 2, Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (at E. 15th St.), 212-777-6800; 9, $20/$22

Known primarily as one of the main creative forces in experimental metal group Mr. Bungle, guitarist Trey Spruance is certainly no stranger to creating genre hybrids. Along with Bungle’s other principal songwriters, Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn, Spruance took glee in mashing up rock, experimental noise, avant-garde jazz, modern classical, obscure film scores and death metal into a twisted, heaving mass. Looking back, Spruance freely admits that Bungle’s aesthetic lacked compassion.

“Mr. Bungle lacked that big-time,” he deadpans. “We were deficient, dehumanized, sub-human, wounded, fucked-up psychological terrorists, frankly. I’ve met a lot of people who were in that phase with us and came out of it on the better side. But I would be bending things to say that we were a good force in the world, though. Because I really don’t think so. Just speaking from the broader cultural context, I don’t think we had a good impact on anything.”

Considering that Spruance’s current band, Secret Chiefs 3, originally included former Bungle members Dunn and Danny Heifetz, it might be tempting for Spruance’s fans to view SC3 as just the main vehicle by which he continues to indulge his genrebending urges. Like Bungle, SC3 makes bedfellows out of various musical styles that rub against one another in a way that initially causes a kind of sonic rug burn. SC3 incorporates various Eastern musical systems—traditional Persian as well as Arabian,Turkish and Indian influences—and grafts them to surf rock, electronic music, jazz and, of course, death metal. But, as irreverent as SC3 may initially come across at times, the idea of creating art with some form of conscience has clearly become important to him.

To better gauge where Spruance is coming from these days, it helps to get his take on Bungle’s motives or lack thereof.

“There was no ideological objective,” he points out. “We hated punks. Revolutionbased political music? We just laughed at that stuff.We were seriously promoting deconstructionist insanity.We grew out of it a little bit, but for our first four demos and our first album, we were coming out of the pit of a severe form of ill-will anarchism.”

SC3, on the other hand, wouldn’t exist without ideology. Spruance explains that he views American society as gutted, ruined and bereft of spiritual mooring.To him, the subversive music he once celebrated represents little more than a hollow shriek in a void of cold, empty space. In essence, SC3 was born when Spruance discovered ancient Persian philosophy in the mid-’90s as an offshoot of his interest in Nietzsche. Reading through archaic texts, Spruance was struck by the way the various writers connected music with philosophy. As his interest grew, he immersed himself more completely. Within this homemade scholarship, he had finally discovered a framework that gave him a sense that there was something worth, if not fighting for, then at least playing for.

“I would hate to be part of something that was trying to tear apart Islamic society through [music],” he says. “It’s already a done deal here and we’re wallowing in it. We’ve reached the end of the line as far as tearing down what was, and are now just trying to content ourselves with atomic dust.”

Spruance stresses that SC3 is based in philosophy and cosmology—it is, for him, not an academic or even purely musical endeavor. And, where irony was such a huge component of Mr. Bungle’s aesthetic, he insists that SC3 contains zero irony. On the other hand, he is adamant that SC3 is not an attempt at “authentic” Persian music either. The band, he offers, would sound more foreign to someone from Iran than it already does to American listeners. He admits that he might come off as an academic or a dabbler in the exotic. And he’s fine with that. He’s also fine if his audience (and band mates) don’t fully grasp his intentions.

“I do like having these challenges,” he says, “because eventually they’re overcome. When we started, we were getting a lot of that: ‘It’s a cheap, Mr. Bungle-improv band.’ Then there’s the other side, which is more tedious about culture, that says, ‘This is bullshit; if I want to hear real Turkish music, I don’t need to listen to you assholes.’ I see those two poles as a mirror image. Even people close to me have had these reactions. It’s not like I don’t know Persian people. I was married to a Persian woman for five years and am still very close with her family. I actually incorporate the whole theme of culturevulturism into what we do, because I’ve been on a few different sides now.The misconceptions have never deterred me, but I am going to try to heal them just by being consistent.”

> Secret Chiefs 3

Mar. 28, Terminal 5, 610 W 56th St. (at 11th Ave.), 212-260-4700; 6:30, $31

“If we were staying at somebody’s house,” Habibion explains with a chuckle, “at 2 a.m., the person would go ‘man, you gotta check out this record!’ I would want to do nothing but go to sleep at that point, so I associate Drive Like Jehu with not being able to sleep.”

Listeners still partial to Drive Like Jehu’s moody, angular drone might have a hard time grasping how Habibion could have willingly overlooked their work, especially as Edsel was mining similar territory. But it’s partly because Edsel was mining similar territory that Habibion makes an ideal partner for Froberg to distance himself even further from the sound he himself once described as “ponderous.”

“Yeah,” agrees Habibion with a laugh. “That kind of music as a whole, even at the time I was making it, I wasn’t actually listening to other bands like that so much. I listen to music based on whatever mood I’m in, and it’s not the kind of music that fits into my home. But it’s fun to go out and see live. If I want to listen to music like that at home, it’s probably going to be Wire or The Damned, not a ‘90s indie-rock band.”

Fans of Drive Like Jehu, Edsel or Froberg’s celebrated pre-Jehu group Pitchfork should know that barely a trace of those bands’ styles can be heard in Obits’ sound. Instead, Obits have opted for a straight-up garage sound — at least that’s what it sounds like at first.

About three songs or so into the band’s debut, I Blame You (out on Tuesday, three days before the band plays The Bell House), myriad shades of punk, post-punk, new wave and even ‘80s pop begin to materialize from amidst the ‘50s-evoking sheen of guitar reverb. As one listens more closely, other influences (such as Devo, Husker Du, etc.) come into sharp focus, even as they remain discreetly tucked into the (relatively) straight-ahead sound that the record maintains until it’s over.

It is in this initial deceptiveness that Obits will grab some listeners, turn off others and ultimately reward anyone who listens more closely. Because I Blame You lands far from yet another tossed-off stroll down the same retro-decorated path we’ve all been dragged down a million and one times before.

“We definitely can’t hide our backgrounds and have no interest in hiding them,” says Habibion. “So it’s going to come through that Rick grew up playing in punk rock bands, and I grew up in the [Washington] D.C. scene going to see the D.C. hardcore bands.That’s always going to be part of our musical vocabulary. It just may be more or less pronounced in any given song.”

Of course, where Jehu and Edsel were characterized by the brittle two-guitar frost of the era, where single-note melody lines intertwine to create a tense kind of harmony, in Obits Habibion and Froberg lean more toward the more traditional rhythmic strumming of rock ‘n’ roll. As we move farther away from the ‘90s, and indie-rock hallmarks that initially appeared to be aging into clichés have arguably begun to acquire new charm, fans may wonder why Froberg and company have opted to go in the opposite direction—or why it took the band two years of rehearsal to arrive at what is, essentially, a simplified approach. But therein lies the appeal of Obits.

“It’s not a self-conscious or conscious thing at all,” says Habibion. “It just took us a while to find that voice, which is why we were in the practice space for so long before playing a show. It’s probably the first time, at least for Rick and for me, where we can experiment with a more traditional component and feel pretty comfortable with it. As long as it doesn’t make us cringe or feel too corny, we don’t mind embracing a cliché now and again.”

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Obits

Mar. 27, The Bell House, 149 7th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), Brooklyn, 718-643-6510; 8, $10/$12