Thanksgiving Is Here and Older People Are Making Music; DJ Mr. Scruff; DJ Four Tet; Paul Oakenfold's "Trancegiving"; Sex Mob's New James Bond Disc and Show

Two DJs appearing this Thanksgiving are just hitting their 30s, so they are financially set with future teenagers and we needn't worry about them in the post-Taliban world. By the way, aren't those CNN guys having a blast saying post-Taliban? That is a phrase made for textbooks; it's going to wind up in shaded sidebars in 10 years next to a picture of Bush driving Putin around in a van.

These two DJs, the ones who are appearing this Wednesday and Friday, the days before and after Thanksgiving, respectively (Oakenfold comes out Thanksgiving night), are called Mr. Scruff and Four Tet. Mr. Scruff is so named because of his scruffy beard, which some women find "cute." Four Tet might be a play on "Quartet," or it might be like a Tet Offensive on the Gang of Four?I'm not sure. In any case, their real names are Andy Carthy (DJ Mr. Scruff) and Kieran Hebden (DJ Four Tet) and they come from England.

DJ Mr. Scruff is great because in addition to playing music that sounds like the theme from the underwater levels of Super Mario Bros. ("Fish" from Chipmunk & Fish), he creates and animates round pencil drawings. Mostly, Mr. Scruff depicts oval creatures resembling the heroes of South Park; he makes them sell newspapers, spin records and run jails on his website, www.mrscruff.com.

Mr. Scruff also likes to play his music for five hours, so you will get your money's worth ($10) if you go and see him at Knitting Factory (74 Leonard St., betw. B'way & Church St., 219-3055) this Wednesday. This isn't something you should go to if you have to take a train to visit your family in Connecticut the next day or something; you'll be home between 3 and 4 a.m., thanks to our post-Taliban subway system. Mr. Scruff starts at 8:30 p.m.; tickets are $10.

...As for DJ Four Tet, Kieran Hebden of Southwest London is on the Domino record label, which also has Folk Implosion ("Natural One" from the Kids soundtrack was their novelty hit) and Steven Malkmus (who never had a novelty hit). DJ Four Tet plays lighter, more experimental material than DJ Mr. Scruff, like chimes with keyboards typing in the background, or a tune that sounds like "Light My Fire" as interpreted by Hungarian peasants ("Hilarious Movie of the 90's" from this year's Pause). He does a show at Knitting Factory on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, coheadlining with DJ Food of the Canadian Ninja Tune label, which also employs DJ Mr. Scruff. See how it all comes full circle? This costs $14, $12 in advance; the show runs from 11:30 p.m. on.

...Sandwiched smack in the middle of DJs Food, Four Tet and Mr. Scruff is Paul Oakenfold, who plays Thanksgiving night in an event called, with the usual Oakenfold understatement, "Trancegiving." (This from the man who brought us Tranceport and Voyage into Trance.) Paul Oakenfold does not make ambient or intelligent dance music; he makes straight-up digitized bass hooks with an utz-utz beat and that's what gets him flown all around the world and identified as "Global Superstar DJ." He is currently working on the remixes for Madonna's Music.

"Trancegiving" goes down at the Hammerstein Ballroom (311 W. 34th St., betw. 8th & 9th Aves., 564-4882), which is now intermittently called the Manhattan Center, at 10 p.m. this Thursday. Tickets will cost you $39.50 plus Ticketmaster garbage, which brings the total to around $45, but for your trouble you also get to see British DJ and likely Oakenfold successor Seb Fontaine.

...For more music made by middle-aged men, we turn to Steven Bernstein of the jazz outfit Sex Mob. Steven recently directed a very strong night of tunes for a packed house at St. Marks Church to honor New York songwriter Doc Pomus, and for this winter he has a new album out. It's called Sex Mob Does Bond and it's an entire CD of background music from James Bond films, re-orchestrated and performed by Steven and his band.

"The technical term for it is 'incidental music,' and it's the stuff that happens behind the scenes," he explains. "They used to put out vinyls of every movie?nowadays they put out the CDs that are like the pop song singles of the movie, but in the past they would put out whole albums of incidental music, so you could just enjoy the music of the film."

Steven Bernstein and Sex Mob got started on the project when Knitting Factory, which seems to be popping up all over this week, offered them a slot in a "Sound of Film Festival." Obliged to pick one artist and cover him for a whole night, Steven selected John Barry, who wrote the classic James Bond scores, and the resulting concert was such a success, label Rope a Dope suggested pressing the Bond album for Sex Mob's next release.

"It's different from anything else I put out...the process was just taking music from the James Bond vinyls that I collect obsessively and miniaturizing it for a quartet?a quintet really, because we have Medeski on there."

Yes, organist John Medeski, whom Steven Bernstein says "will have his own ice cream flavor someday, just like Jerry," fleshes out the James Bond tunes quite nicely. Sex Mob Does Bond succeeds because you can hear the vibe of accomplished musicians kicking back to explore a childhood obsession. Tunes like "Dr. Yes," which Steven wrote expressly for the record, wind in nicely with highlights like the theme from You Only Live Twice.

"It's great to sit down and improvise stuff you never thought you'd get a chance to do," says Steven. "But hey, I just played a Pampers jingle today and I play weddings on Saturdays, you know?"

Sex Mob exhibit their new material this Saturday at Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette St., betw. Astor Pl. & E. 4th St., 539-8770). Their show starts at 8:30, costs $15 and it will have some special guests in store. "It's Sex Mob With Strings, with two lovely ladies with cellos between their legs, so you don't have to look at us all night," Steven explains. "Medeski's not playing but you never know because he could always show up."