194 dB / BRYAN REED

No. 3: Wig, flipped

By Bryan Reed

It's interesting how a small deviation from what we expect can make such a huge impact in the way we respond to something. It's what makes difficult music difficult in the first place, and why it takes an adventurous listener to even approach experimental music.

My expectations were rattled recently when the self-titled debut from Philadelphia's Seabrook Power Plant (pictured above) arrived in my mailbox. I was previously unaware of the band, led by jazz guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook, but they share a publicist with Asheville, N.C. skronk-rock trio Ahleuchatistas, and I guess he thought (correctly) if I liked one, I'd like the other. The album explodes from the start with "Peter Dennis Blanford Townshend" (in homage to The Who guitarist), in which any expectations about how Brandon Seabrook might be wielding his banjo are upended as soon as the instruments percussive flair begins to resemble a Dave Lombardo blast.

The way the trio uses the banjo's percussive attack in its math-metal fueled cuts (the album was recorded by Colin Marston of Dysrhythmia and Krallice, so it's got its loud rock bona fides) is at once novel and effective. On the transcendent "Ho Chi Minh Trial," Seabrook's banjo is an instrument of surprising melodic acuity, evoking Eastern melodic structures, even as its frantic percussiveness drives the song like there's a machine gun shooting at its feet.

Brandon's brother, Jared Seabrook, drums with finesse and power (notably on the chiming doom of "Doomsday Shroud," where his plodding punctuations split the haze of electric guitar and bass, pushing the song forward behind Brandon Seabrook's hypnotic, repetitive riffs).

Bassist Tom Blancart drives the melody, answering Brandon Seabrook on the jazzabilly "Base Load Plant Theme," alternately echoing Brandon Seabrook's riffs, or pulsing ahead of Jared Seabrook's backbeat.

That there could exist a trio of musicians playing a mix of frantic punk, tech-metal and jazz-skronk is hardly surprising, though. And after listening a few times, the banjo's timbre is less novel, though no less effective. What really defies expectations is the consistency with which the three players' talents are congealed here.

That's also what made listening to Eight Bells, the latest from longstanding heavy-psych outfit SubArachnoid Space exciting for me. This album was my introduction to the band, through cursory research reveals an almost 15-year career with releases on labels including Relapse, and, for Eight Bells, Crucial Blast.

Led by guitarist Melynda Jackson, SubArachnoid Space has, apparently, been a shape-shifting creature, constantly rotating its roster. But on this record, the shapes that shift are mostly textural, as the band's spacey tracks move fluidly through different melodic passages and layered drones.

But what surpasses expectations, isn't that the band touches on psychedelic rock, drone, noise and post-hardcore, but that it envelops it influences and coalesces as something new and exciting. Perhaps it's the ever-shifting line-up that contributes to the fresh, extemporaneous feeling I hear in Eight Bells, or perhaps it's a well-honed professionalism masquerading as startled discovery. It doesn't matter. The record's front-to-back good, and that will always be a welcome, but unexpected attribute.

Also in rotation: Ahleuchatistas - Of The Body Prone (Tzadik); Lightning Bolt - Earthly Pleasures (Load); Psyched To Die - Year One (Dirtnap); Horseback - MILH IHVH (Turgid Animal); Baroness - Blue Record (Relapse); Converge - Axe To Fall (Epitaph); Pelican - What We All Come To Need (Southern Lord); White Mice - Ganjahovahdose (20 Buck Spin); Skeletonwitch - Breathe The Fire (Prosthetic)

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Bryan Reed is from North Carolina and, despite his best efforts, he still hasn't grown out of the racket that irritated his friends and family in high school, and continues to irritate them in the present. Stalker-types should know that they can follow Bryan on Twitter @subparrockstar.

[Photo of Seabrook Power Plant by Peter Gannushkin]