friday27
LEMON PRETEND This is what members of Triangle–pop weirdos transplanted from Minneapolis to the Bay Area–call themselves when they suit up as part of Oakland’s experimental laptop scene. In this guise, they specialize in DayGlo trashscapes and trancey techno for people who prefer Matmos to Tiesto. Whether it’s actually dance music is debatable: elastic yet strangely static, it’s more like free-riffing fun-house fright music. (Or maybe that’s just the stuff they decided to put on MySpace.) Skarekrau Radio headlines, Lemon Pretend opens, Reader expat Liz Armstrong and Rand Sevilla spin, and Ron MILF VJs. This show, like tomorrow’s performance by Triangle at the Co-Prosperity Sphere, is part of Version>07; see Fairs & Festivals for a full schedule of related music. a 9 PM, Sonotheque, 1444 W. Chicago, 312-226-7600, $10. –Jessica Hopper
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cOMAR SOSA AFREECANOS QUARTET Cuban pianist Omar Sosa enjoys a well-deserved reputation for following his own path. Where most of his compatriots attack every chorus with the urgent intensity of a dying man, he incorporates space and light into his virtuosic playing, which links him both to older Cuban forms and to the mysteries of postmodern jazz. And his ongoing interest in uniting musical traditions of Africa and the Middle East using Afro-Cuban rhythms as the glue has produced some seriously idiosyncratic stuff–2002’s Sentir is a wild ride featuring a Moroccan singer and an American rapper. For his new Afreecanos Quartet, he couldn’t have found a more simpatico collaborator than Senegalese percussionist-vocalist Mola Sylla: now living in Amsterdam, Sylla collaborates regularly with new-music cellist Ernst Reijseger and has recorded with Tuvan and Sardinian throat singers. His hearty tenor and passionate delivery offer grand possibilities for this group, which also includes Mozambican bassist Childo Tomas and Cuban drummer Julio Barreto. All four players will appear on the group’s debut, a live album called Promise (Skip) originally due this fall but now pushed back to 2008. a 7:30 and 10 PM, HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo, 312-362-9707, $20. –Neil Tesser
c Joseph hammer Joseph Hammer wears a single white cotton glove when he performs, but it’s no homage to Michael Jackson: he needs it to get physical with his tape. A late-era member of the Los Angeles Free Music Society (a wild collective that combined radical noise and goofball humor) and one-third of the 90s electronic group Solid Eye, Hammer has been manipulating loops for more than two decades. These days he keeps his sound files–snippets of spoken-word recordings, old soul tunes, and orchestral music, among other sources–on a laptop but transfers them to analog when it’s time to go to town. Moving the tape through the machine at various speeds, he exposes only parts to the playback and erasure heads to generate his weird collages of sound. His CD Dynasty Suites (Melon Expander, 2002) isn’t so far from something Christian Marclay might do with his turntables, only Hammer sticks with each sound source longer, manipulating it to create queasy permutations. This is his Chicago debut. a 9 PM, 6Odum, 2116 W. Chicago, 312-282-7676, $12. A –Peter Margasak
c Loose Assembly Last Year’s Ghost (482 Music), the debut of this quintet led by drummer Mike Reed, dropped this week after a three-year incubation. Alternating between short, mostly improvised pieces focused on texture and gestural interplay and fully realized tunes–from elegant ballads with long, lilting melodies to blistering free bop that recalls Chicago’s soulful jazz past–it’s a collection of raw beginnings and satisfying conclusions. Reed and bassist Josh Abrams lay down propulsive grooves, over which vibist Jason Adasiewicz floats spiky harmonic patterns; this gives alto saxophonist Greg Ward and cellist Tomeka Reid plenty to work with once they break out of their unison melodic lines and turn to improvising. Ward in particular sounds terrific, balancing gorgeous lyric shapes with tightly coiled multiphonic screams. a 10 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, 773-935-2118, donation requested. –Peter Margasak
DIMMU BORGIR Whenever hipsters ask me to articulate what it is I like about black metal, the only rational explanation I can give is that if you grew up attending schools that were largely run by people who believed in demonic possession and backward masking, a band that isn’t afraid to say they’re satanic as fuck will hold a certain appeal no matter how old and jaded you get. But even the scariest black metal bands become reassuringly familiar after a while. Dimmu Borgir started out writing songs for virgin sacrifices, gave that up to record with orchestras (it’s hard to say which is more unholy), and wound up getting called sellouts in the process, even though they basically always sounded the same. Their recent records haven’t matched the onslaught of 1999’s Spiritual Black Dimensions–the forthcoming In Sorte Diaboli (Nuclear Blast) certainly doesn’t–but live these Norwegians still play the music the way it was meant to be played. Consider it the next best thing to seeing Dethklok live. Unearth, Devildriver, and Kataklysm open. a 5:45 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, 312-923-2000 or 312-559-1212, $20.50-$24.50. A –Monica Kendrick
