MUSIC

Are you ready to tap into a spiritual stream of consciousness? Tickets are still available for Gang Gang Dance at the Rock & Roll Hotel tonight. In an earlier Arts Desk post, Marian McLaughlin dove into the trippy art rock group's ritualism and its captivation with infinity. The band performs with Bubbles, DJ Xiao Yang, and DJ Jewd Law. 8:30 p.m. $15.

Vibraphonist and drummer Chuck Redd performs alongside bassist Nicki Parrott and jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli on the Millennium Stage. Michael J. West calls Pizzarelli—father of guitarist, vocalist, and radio show host John Pizzarelli—a "living legend" who once toured with Benny Goodman's band, but likes to mix it up a little bit. 6 p.m. Free.

In stripped-down rock: Los Angeles three-piece Wet & Reckless played Arlington yesterday, and cross the border into D.C. to open for Bake Sale at Velvet Lounge tonight. 9 p.m. $8. 21+. And the super-simple garage rock/pop band Howlies play Black Cat with Young Buffalo. 8:30 p.m. $10.

Fargo bluesboy Jonny Lang plays the first of two engagements with Natalie York at Birchmere tonight. In the '90s, Lang looked like a Hanson brother but impressed critics with his meaty voice and guitar solos. He doesn't have a new album out yet, but he fancies collaboration—last year he worked with Carlos Santana and Cyndi Lauper, among others. Oh, and the Jonas Brothers, in 2009. Ha! 7:30 p.m. $49.50.

NoVa rock band The NRIs have a newish five-song EP, Kings and Birds, and play Fort Reno tonight with The Gift and The Union of Sgt. Teddy. 7:15 p.m. Free.

Those who purchased tickets to the Gomez show at the 9:30 Club tonight are due for a refund. Ben Ottewell lost his voice and the British band canceled its eight remaining tour dates.

FILM

Regular readers of the New York Times' voyeuristic "On the Street" feature will want to catch Bill Cunningham New York, the documentary about the 80-something, bicycle-riding photographer known for capturing fashion trends in New York as they blossom on city streets. 7 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. $8-10.

The band, which performs tonight at Rock & Roll Hotel, took the idea of infinity even farther during a session it shot this past May as part of its label 4AD's series of performance videos. Inspired by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and her "infinity rooms", the band redesigned the space of Angelic Studioes in England, turning it into a 20-square-feet enclosure of mirrors. This effect creates a sense of infinity, and in the video, it multiplies the group's reflection, creating an endless visual repetition and magnification of their surroundings. They also incorporated the use of prisms and light in the video, playing with refraction—when a wave changes direction due to speed.

About waves: Gang Gang Dance uses an explosive range of sine waves in its music video "MindKilla," directed by Shoji Goto of the Japanese experimental band Boredoms.  That video is just one of many collaborations between Gang Gang Dance and Boredoms. The groups first met on tour in Australia. "We vibed so well, and connected beyond music,"  says Gang Gang Dance's Brian Glasser DeGraw. Apparently: On August 8, 2008, at 8:08 p.m. EST, GGD conducted the Brooklyn performance of "Boardrums," an 88-minute long drum-off with 88 drummers. Three hours later, in California, Boredoms began their West Coast performance of the same ritual. A year later, the two bands played together on a cosmic Japanese cruise in the middle of the ocean during a solar eclipse.

On its own, Gang Gang Dance is no less trippy.  "The whole thing is a ritual," Glasser DeGraw says. "It's not just rock 'n' roll where we hang out and write riffs. We never discuss what we do. We get together, and we don't speak much, and that's how we tap into a spiritual stream of consciousness."

The band has invoked such themes for years. In a 2006 Identity Theory interview, DeGraw discussed how the death of bandmate Nathan Maddox—he was struck by lightning—pushed the band onward through some unconscious way. He also talked about the artwork from their album at the time, God's Money, on which the collaged face of Maddox stares posthumously outward in an intense and observant manner. "Those eyes are just staring at people and burning themselves into their subconscious," DeGraw said.

There's no visual eyeball motif on Eye Contact, but it penetrates just as powerfully as Maddox's captivating stare. The band performs with Bubbles tonight at 8:30 p.m. at Rock & Roll Hotel. $15.

GOG Blog says you should go, and they're right. In case you need more convincing, here are some of the latest Moombahton tunes.

The Moombahton Massive EP II features tracks from all of tonight's DJs—Nada, New York's DJ Sabo, Rotterdam's Munchi, and Charlotte, N.C.'s Heartbreak—and is a nice overview of the genre's possibilities, even if, like me, you're not quite capable of ethnomusicalogical reverse-engineering. Munchi's "Gracias" is has eased-out Latin guitar strums and a chill pace; Sabo's "Jump Around" blends with Moombahton with dubstep and, um, House of Pain; Nadastrom's "Venga" is onto some air-raid shit.

Releaserpm feat. Lizzie Bougatsos (Nadastrom Moombahton Remix)

For a recent remix, Nada's duo Nadastrom slowed "Releaserpm," a new song from producer XXXchange's Win Win project, featuring Lizzer Bougatsos of Gang Gang Dance. So it's a win on bonafides alone. Also, it occasioned Moombahton's first (I think!) mention on Pitchfork.

The Winter of Moombahton mixtape

Oh snap. This mixtape assembled by DJ Melo has almost 30 Moombahton cuts (and some Moombahcore, and some Cumbahcore, and probably some other sub-subgenres), including tracks by every DJ spinning at UHall tonight, plus other D.C. names like Cam Jus and Obeyah.

Moombahton Massive II starts at 10 p.m. at U Street Music Hall, 1115 U St. NW. $10 ($5 with RSVP).

Kid Cudi: "You Can Call Me Moon Man"
"You Can Call Me Moon Man," Kanye protege Kid Cudi reveals that he's not from the Midwest, as previously believed, but from the heavens. Specifically, the Moon. And what's it like on the moon? Dark, apparently. Cudi spends most of "You Can Call Me Moon Man" dropping sobering boasts along the lines of "Shit is so damn sick/ No antibiotic could ever fucking stop it/ If you copped it, please O.D." Other lines–"I make immortal songs for the mortals to cruise with,"– imply Cudi might be getting high on hot air.

Gang Gang Dance: "Live @ Southpaw, April 2008"
Just in case you forgot they were out there, Gang Gang Dance recently slipped a full live set into a podcast by Social Registry (the band's US label). Because the concert was taped all the way back in '08 and is largely made up of tunes from the group's last record, Saint Dymphna, so none of this is new, exactly. Then again, the way that the songs "First Communion" and "House Jam" are mashed up here with slurry jams, you might not recognize them right away, anyway.

Six Organs of Admittance: "The Ballad of Charley Harper"
In his paintings, Cincinnati-based artist Charley Harper sought to simplify nature–to create an ordered representation of a complex reality. There's a good chance that Six Organs of Admittance's "The Ballad of Charley Harper," with its slowly cycling melodies, is an homage to that sensibility. Ben Chasny uses simple components–an acoustic guitar, some distortion, a single lyric–to suggest some larger and more elusive mystic truth.

Ganglians: "Lost Words"
Remember that scene in Animal House where John Belushi rips the guitar out of a hippie's hands and smashes it to bits against the wall? "Lost Words," by Sacramento's Ganglians, might insight a similar style of blind rage, at least for the hot tempered. Gilded in reedy falsettos and cascading waves of autumnal guitar, this is, ostensibly, a song about going to the grocery store.

Black Meteoric Star: "Death Tunnel"
A name can go a long way in techno. Were this song composed under a more upbeat moniker and given a title with a little more sunshine, it could easily be misconstrued as party music. But this is "Death Tunel," by Black Meteoric star, and as such, the track's pulsing sequenced synths suggest something more sinister. This is music for vintage-sci-fi dystopia and the darkest old-school Nintendo games.

Gang Gang Dance: "First Communion (TV on The Radio Remix)"
Less of a remix than a grudge-match between Manhattan and Brooklyn's two most widely discussed art-rock bands. But there are no winners or losers here, just judiciously programmed 909s. TV on The Radio hurls itself into one of the better songs from Gang Gang Dance's Saint Dymphna, stripping off some of the original's lush synthesizers and locking down the tempo to a steady, if jittery, pulse. It's hard to call it an improvement, but it's hardly a throwaway.

Jack Carneal is a Towson professor and resides with his family in Baltimore. He runs Yaala Yaala Records. This year he released a terrific album by renown Malian hunter's musician Yoro Sidibe, who I was lucky enough to have interviewed. That album is one of my favorites of the year. Carneal digs it too.

Carneal took some time from turning in his students' final grades for the semester and made up his own mini-list of top record discoveries:

1) Bonnie Prince Billy, Lie Down in the Light, Drag City Records

This one is easy for me. I first heard "Ohio River Boat Song" in 1992 or 91 before it had come out; Will sent a rough cassette to his big brother Ned, my bandmate at the time, and we listened to it in Ned's car. I just don't think anyone's really able to get their heads around how influential Will has been over the nearly two decades since that first single. But one day everyone will recognize that he's made better, more interesting records for an extraordinarily long period of time, with really no sleepwalkers, and his work will be noted by future human beings as high points of pre and post-millenial recorded music. This record is perfect.

2) Yoro Sidibe, s/t, Yaala Yaala Records

I first heard Yoro singing from a boombox in 1999, Bougouni, Mali. He was singing a song called 'Dougouni Yala" which, as I understood it, is a song about bird hunting. Dougouni is some kind of pigeon while Yala, taken from the Arabic "to go", mutated as it entered Bamanan in that wonderful way that language tends to mutate, becoming a word that, again as I understood it, means to ramble, wander, trek rather than simply 'to go'. We borrowed the word and the idea, used a more official Bamanan spelling, for our label. I still get chills every single time I hear this music. Every time. Without fail.

3) Surasama, s/t, Drag City

I don't know much about this one except that when I play it I am instantly relaxed. It was on my record player pretty much all summer: windows open, breezes, that sort of thing.

4) Gerry Mulligan, Jeru & Art Pepper Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section

I think everyone should listen to Gerry Mulligan. Being no jazzbo, I believe the West Coast jazz scene was less hard than NY, ergo the moniker 'cool' pinned on Chet Baker, et. al. (though if you've seen video of Dave Brubeck, particularly the incredible drummer Joe Morello, you begin to wonder about that adjective being applied to too many jazz musicians). While much bop can be frantic, skittering and nervewracking, much of the West Coast jazzers tried to mine steadier, calmer grooves; 'Art Pepper Meets the Rhythmn Section' is another great example.

5) Gang Gang Dance St Dymphna & Raw War

A lot of early GGD was interesting, said in that ironic way that infers some chin-rubbing element that may preclude actual goodness. Not their last two releases, the EP 'Raw War' and the full-length St Dymphna. There is something strange and moving about Raw War, a tribute to musician Nathan Maddox who was struck by lightning as he lay on a Manhattan rooftop; similarly, St Dymphna is moving for entirely different reasons, an almost perfect combination of improv inscrutability, hip-hop sensibility and a mysterious odd glittery pretzel and street- smelling kind of evocation of Manhattan that has a huge amount of power to wring many lost memories.