May 19-25, 2005

musicpicks

The Beat Kids

jazz

"The whole approach is to now get these experimental sounds to continue to work in a more dance-based, beat-driven environment," explains drummer Guillermo E. Brown. Citing the likes of De La Soul and Bad Brains as influences alongside Coltrane and Archie Shepp, he says, "These multitude expressions of pan-African diasporic identity are very real and powerful and close to me." And Brown is possibly the most crucial element in Matthew Shipp's forward-looking Blue Series experiments. The drummer has the hardest task in bridging free-form improvisation and the steady, driving beat of hip-hop, but Brown's irregular rhythmic concepts and unerring sense of time keep the freshness of jazz alive even in his most danceable moments. Brown's work as composer and producer with the Beat Kids allows his ideas to come to the fore, with Sun Ra synth freakouts on top of shifting rhythms, poetry and soul colliding with noise bursts, and free improv butting up against breakbeats.

Thu., May 19, 8 p.m., free, The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., 215-573-3234.

—Shaun Brady