Fans of experimental electronic music will get an earful this coming Saturday at the latest all-night show thrown by the popular Organic Groove productions.
Manning the PA system will be Britain's Chris Clark, whose gothic, melodic glitch-inflected techno burrows deep into the brain, thanks to his percussive pallet of sampled slaps, claps and finger snaps. His work on the Warp label has, at times, been a heady affair, but live sets tend to resonate more in the hips than the cerebral cortex.
Headlining will be Seattle-based jazz three-piece, Ponga, who have more in common with Miles Davis fusion (think "Bitches Brew") than they do with today's laptop-toters. A network of loops and samples gives their bullish improvisation a center, but when it's all said and done the china shop may lie in ruins.
Before Ponga takes the stage, don't miss Canada's Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Manitoba. Abandoning the clinical sampling studies of his earlier work, Snaith has thrust himself headfirst into the canon of shimmering psych-pop. The result was this year's "Up in Flames," a blissed-out amalgam of drumbeats, jangly riffs and quivering walls of sound that would make Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine grin from ear to ear. Snaith's touring band will help out on strings, skins and glockenspiel, but don't be surprised if Ponga's gregarious sax-for-hire, Sherick, comes out to rip through one of the numerous free-jazz flourishes from "UIF." It'll be dawn before you know it.
