Rock Picks: Camper Van Beethoven, Cass McCombs, AC/DC

Magda at the Standard Downtown
With its monthly Culprit parties at the Standard, L.A. DJ team Droog is pushing the limits of what type of dance music can start the party on the roof of a posh downtown hotel. With guests like Martin Landsky and Matias Aguayo, Culprit has stayed on the cutting edge of electronic music this summer, and that streak continues with Magda. Hailing from Berlin via Detroit and Poland, Magda has been an underground icon since the late 1990s. Her strikingly stripped-down selections helped to usher in this decade’s wave of minimal techno, and her ear for new and interesting sounds has kept her at the forefront of the genre. A cornerstone artist of Richie Hawtin’s label, Minus, she is part of one of the world’s most technologically innovative music teams. Her set this Sunday will foreshadow what every other DJ will be doing in two years’ time. (Liz Ohanesian)

Guido Karp

Bells are ringing: AC/DC

Todd Zimmer

Slow burn: Jonneine Zapata

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More About

• Mikael Wood
• John Payne
• Chris Martins
• Erykah Badu
• Cass McCombs

Also playing Sunday:

NINE INCH NAILS, HEALTH at the Echoplex; REFRIGERATOR, WCKR SPGT, ADAM LIPPMAN, NEAL MORGAN at Echo Curio; NEBULA at Spaceland; WARPED ANNIVERSARY FEAT. BAD RELIGION, RISE AGAINST, NOFX, PENNYWISE, OZOMATLI, OTHERS at Club Nokia; LA RESISTENCIA, VIERNES 13, 8KALACAS, RED STORE BUMS, OTHERS at the Knitting Factory.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

Leslie & the Badgers at The Echo
Sometimes, a person just has to dig for the roots of a thing. Leslie Stevens climbed out on a handful of musical limbs — studying opera in Italy, learning jazz at USC, fronting the punk local band Zeitgeist Auto Parts — before she started working her way down to terra firma with her current outfit, the Badgers. The quintet’s brand of roots music gets deeper and more authentic with each release, and it doesn’t hurt that the new album, Roomful of Smoke, was produced by none other than Tom Petty and Tift Merritt boardsman David Bianco. On songs like “My Tears Are Wasted on You,” Stevens perfectly channels Dolly Parton over roomy, string-laden easy country, while “It’s Okay to Trip” builds twang and tinkling ivories into a saloon sing-along. Live, the Badgers’ familiar sound and gathered instrumental might make for a show both intimate and expansive. (Chris Martins)

Also playing Monday:

NICO VEGA, DIRTY STREET, GRINGO STAR at the Roxy; I.E., ABE VIGODA, MOMENT TRIGGER, BRO-MAGS at Pehrspace; SAINT MOTEL, THE JAKES, FIGHT FROM ABOVE, GIANT STATE at Spaceland.

AC/DC at the Honda Center
There was something wickedly ironic about the sight of thousands of AC/DC fans raising hell and sporting red glow-in-the-dark devil’s horns at the Australian hard-rock band’s show late last year at the Forum — which is owned by a Christian church. That little revival meeting was part of AC/DC’s first local tour in a decade, and it featured cannons, exploding fireballs, a humongous 90-foot-tall blowup doll, singer Brian Johnson dangling from a gigantic bell, lead guitarist Angus Young rising from a massive, phallic platform, and a stage set that looked like a crashed locomotive. All of that sound and fury actually signified something, since the group’s 2008 album, Black Ice, was their strongest in many years, with quintessential tracks like “Big Jack” and “Rock N’ Roll Train” contrasted by the sinuously snaky “Stormy May Day,” which wallowed lasciviously in muddy layers of woozy-bluesy slide guitar. For those about to rock, we salute you, but bring earplugs: An AC/DC concert causes the kind of nonstop ringing in your head where, the next day, you want to apologize to everyone nearby, thinking they must be hearing it, too. It’s that loud. (Falling James)

Hedgehog, Queen Sea Big Shark, the Casino Demon at Silverlake Lounge
The U.S.-based China AIDS Orphan Fund, which operates as the name implies, certainly couldn’t be accused of having its priorities mixed up. With so much attention being given to the charitable redistribution of resources, wrangling a halfway-decent Chinese rock band for a benefit tour would suffice. Well, evidently, someone at the CAOF has pretty good taste and a knack for negotiations, as the Sing for China tour features not one, but three exceptional East Asian acts. Beijing’s Hedgehog makes awesome pastoral slacker rock with pop overtones. The trio’s third album, Blue Daydreaming, could fit into the Merge oeuvre with ease. Queen Sea Big Shark also hails from the capital, but carves out a far more urgent sound. Lead songstress Fu Han sasses and squeaks like Karen O, while her bandmates play angular, synth-dripping surf rock. Opener Casino Demon carves out a slightly more mellow existence between Morrissey and the Libertines, but all three bands seem to represent the best of their respective scenes. (Chris Martins)

Also playing Tuesday:

OS MUTANTES at Amoeba Music; SUMMER DARLING, SING ORPHEUS at the Echo; COLLECTIVE SOUL, BLACK STONE CHERRY, RYAN STAR at House of Blues; THE 88 at Spaceland.

Twilight Circus Dub Sound System at the Echoplex
The unreal universe revealed via the Twilight Circus Dub Sound System spirals from the hands of Ryan Moore, who in another galaxy several centuries ago served as the bassist for notorious art-prog deviants the Legendary Pink Dots — and whose time spent among that darkly surreal crew poked curiously at his brain like it was so much Play-Doh. Carried out in his secret laboratory in deepest, darkest, flattest Holland, the prolific and gung-ho Moore’s mixes — more subdued and trad versions of which can be heard in his work with reggae icons such as Big Youth, Ranking Joe and Michael Rose of Black Uhuru — are a state-of-the-art, thoroughly mind-shagging dub madness producing wild visions of the emerald forests beyond neveryear in a time that land forgot. Be, like, there. (John Payne)