THE HUB Wardrobe, Leeds
The Guardian, UK, May 9, 2001 

James Griffiths
**** out of *****

New York three-piece THE HUB invade the stage like naughty school children, taking up their instruments with manic glee before making the most shocking racket ever played under the name of jazz.

Tim Dahl starts as he means to go on, his bass guitar making obscene belching noises, while Sean Noonan’s snare drum cracks like a revolver going off. Dan Magay on saxophone somehow holds his own amid the maelstrom, curling his sinewy lines that refuse to be intimidated. The band’s music is probably best described as free jazz meets death metal inside the blades of a combine harvester. There is an illusion of chaos-but the presence of sheet music and the expressions of fierce concentration give the game away. This is tightly disclipined composition, the comical stops and starts having been meticulously rehearsed.

The musicians perform with such wild abandon that their antics resemble performance art. Behind the drums, Noonan contorts his body jerking spasmodically as if he’s just stuck his fingers in an electric light socket. He has an extremely unorthodox approach, waving his limbs about in a manner guaranteed to horrify jazz purists, and he occasionally attacks his cymbals in mock rage.

After an hour and a half of this preposterously fiddly noise, your ears start to tire. Just how entertaining the HUB’s music would be with out the fun of actually watching them play is open to question, although they will have no difficulty in cornering the musical masochist market. 

Tonight, they remain scintillating and almost frighteningly intense. Everyone laughs when Tim Dahl gleefully announces that the band intend to smash up their hotel rooms after the gig, but it is surprisingly easy to believe him.
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The publicity photo of The Hub, if seen without their music playing for context, would lead one to believe they are a metal band of one form or another, probably thrash. Two of them have their faces hidden by long, disheveled hair, and the third is wearing a Boston Celtics jersey. Okay, that has nothing to do with anything, but I couldn't leave him out of the conversation. The thing about The Hub, though, is they don't play thrash metal, death metal, precious metal or any other kind of metal, though at times there's an inclination, due to the attitude, tone and crunch in a song, to call their music avant-gardgebanger. 

Yes, The Hub are definitely advanced musicians, playing compositions that draw on jazz, funk, and several sub genres of rock. Often disjointed and jolting, their music can also dissolve into moments of calming beauty - just before hitting the gas and spinning out onto the wide open highway once again, where you never know what to expect. Drummer Sean Noonan lays down the tracks without a map, or so it seems to the listener, rarely playing it particularly subtly, a move that would be a big mistake guaranteeing he'd be lost in the mix under the absolutely monstrous sound of bassist Tim Dahl, who is not - I repeat, not - using an acoustic bass here. It's electric, often distorted, and LOUD! Noonan and Dahl are brilliant together on these 11 compositions, which are their own. They write alone, and the tally is Dahl 7, Noonan 4. 

That leaves one non-writing member of the band. Dan Magay's alto sax work is not only up to snuff, it snags your imagination and makes you forget everything around you except the music. The guy's dynamite. First string. Some of the pieces call for rather simple honking, or more like seemingly simple honking, which will last a minute or so while Dahl or Noonan lays down something worthy of careful study. Then, when you've forgotten all about Magay, the guy takes off like a terrified, electrified swallow, painting notes in places you weren't expecting to hear them. It's fun stuff for the avant-garde fan, and good material to show someone you're trying to turn on to avant-garde, because the timing of most of the songs seems to be 4/4, a rarity in this kind of music and a miracle when it works so well. What I want now, besides more CDs, is more information. Precious little info shows up on the Net, and I want to keep a close eye on this trio. Hey, a band with music this exciting, unusual and explosive doesn't come around every day, you know?
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