Double Adaptor: Live at the Village Vanguard
Osaka

Christening itself a 'miniature improvising electronic bar band,' Double Adaptor (Roy Carroll on computers and keyboards and Keith O'Brien on computers and guitars) generates a relentless ruckus that's hard to ignore on its 41-minute debut. Beneath the chaotic playfulness, however, lies evidence of organization, even if one must look closely to find it; buried within the skuzzy murk of “N-YO,” for example, one glimpses a softly lurching dirge. Consequently, what might in lesser hands collapse into directionless blather, here coheres (over repeated listenings, mind you) into challengingly dense clusters of purposeful sound. Following “Splurge,” a throat clearer of grinding splatter, the considerably more interesting “200 Nanowebbers” weaves smothered writhings into a machine setting of cyber-melancholia, while dub-funk rhythms squirt throughout the possessed convulsions of “Black 2.” Be aware that the album has its share of high points (like Free Jazz melting atop an incinerating hard drive, Bronek Szalanski's Coltranesque tenor wails throughout the aptly-titled throwdown “Saxophone Collosus”) and low (the guitar prog-raunch of the jittery “Black 3” will try even the most patient souls). Live at the Village Vanguard is the sound of noisy computer experimentalism permeated by Sonig-styled insanity.

October 2005