Sonic Massage

Z�ev at Dangerous Curve

A A A Comments (0) By Peter Frank Wednesday, May 2 2007

He’s from here and he started here (doing electroacoustic music at UCLA in the later 1960s), but his performances here have been few and far between. Z’ev, who has lived and gigged around the world, is starting to make up for this anomaly. He made a flurry of appearances a few months ago, and now a two-set solo at Dangerous Curve tops off that tough-and-rumble institution’s music-filled Sunday. Doing us the honors in the midst of his 44-city tour, Z’ev – who’s performed with everyone from John Zorn to Glenn Branca to Johanna Went (he did the sound for Went’s own perfos this month at Track 16) — will raise the rafters with his high-decibel but oddly unclangorous percussorama. I say “unclangorous” because there is a sonic logic to even the most extreme of Z’ev’s bashing about, a logic that keeps things tuned not simply in a tonal sense, but in a spiritual one. His presentations are rituals of sound, fierce and overwhelming yet intensely centering; they’re to ambient music what deep-tissue massage is to Swedish. And, in the end, for all their simplicity and intensity, you’ve never heard anything quite like Z’ev’s noise-mantras. A roster of more conventionally jazzical but still out-there improvisers comprises the afternoon bill, including Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask’s Choir Boys, the group Cosmologic, and local hero Vinny Golia’s quartet. Dangerous Curve, 1020 E. Fourth Place, dwntwn.; Sun., May 6. Choir Boys, Cosmologic and the Vinny Golia Quartet at 4 p.m., $7-$10; Z’ev at 8 p.m., $7-$10. (213) 617-8483 or www.dangerouscurve.org.

—Peter Frank