March 28-April 3, 2002

musicpicks

Plaid

Dance/Electronic

How did Plaid manage to clean up? Out of the evolutionary soup that folded early hip-hop, hard house and an all-around crates-digging ethos into mid-'90s British techno, duo Andy Turner and Ed Handley emerged with a sheer, new sound. Without genre-mashing messily, the pair, ex-members of hard-to-listen-to, hard-to-avoid techno-Egyptologists The Black Dog, went on to distill their favorite influences -- hip-hop breaks, drum and bass and bound-off-the-walls techno -- into something smarter, a kind of dance music that looked before it leapt. While this logical progression soon acquired a label, "intelligent techno," Plaid proved that there was nothing so satisfying as breaking new ground gently: On their second full-length, Not for Threes, they collaborated with Björk on the soft-spoken "Lilith," before returning the favor with remixes of tracks including "Big Time Sensuality." Nowadays, such purity gets you everywhere: Their latest album, Double Figure, on Warp records, leads you down crystal halls of sound, their noise prism as clear as that of Autechre and twice as exultant.

Sat., March 30, 10 p.m., $12, $14 day of show, 21+, with Nobukazu Takemura and Mira Calix, North Star, 27th and Poplar sts., 215-684-0808, www.northstarbar.com.

—Juliet Fletcher

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