One such tune, “I Don’t Feel So Good,” was a highlight of Tuesday’s set. Brandon Seabrook, playing electric guitar, paired off at first with Mr. Blancarte to play a sludgy riff. This went on for a while, drums crashing on the downbeat, before abruptly stopping for a guitar solo. Mr. Seabrook set it high on his fret board, in scurrying-centipede mode.
Among the other guitar-centered tunes were “Base Load Plant Theme,” an overdriven full-group freak-out, and “Waltz of the Nuke Workers,” a blast of deceptive punk primitivism. Mr. Seabrook’s solos were studies in gangly aggression: even with the softening effects of a delay pedal his tone conveyed a kind of blowtorch immediacy. His style wasn’t far removed from that of Marc Ribot, a veteran of equally wily constitution.
On banjo Mr. Seabrook placed more emphasis on his physical contact with the instrument. For one stretch of “Occupation 1977” he strummed hard and fast enough to produce a whirring cry, against which his partners’ unevenly spaced exclamation points suggested a dispatch in Morse code. Next came a section of gnarly fingerpicking, with brisk arpeggios that delved into atonality. Similar passages occurred throughout a tricky multisection piece called “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” which flirted with Eastern modal scales, and briefly had Mr. Seabrook running a horsehair bow across the banjo’s strings. -Nate Chinen NY TIMES
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