MUSIC

The Hip-Hop Theater Festival continues with the 6th Annual J. Dilla Tribute and Fundraiser at the 9:30 Club. Since producer J. Dilla died of a rare blood disease in 2006, Jon Laine and The Players have been carrying the torch by reproducing his tracks live. Tonight, the band is joined by The Pharcyde, Gods'Illa, Wes Felton, Maimouna Youssef (after she wraps up her performance at the Kennedy Center), and many others, in a tribute to the artist and a fundraiser for the J. Dilla and Lupus foundations. The promoters advise guests to arrive early. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. $20.

Fiery Furnaces guitarist Eleanor Friedberger shows up at the Black Cat Backstage to play some songs from her solo album Last Summer. Romania (Roman from The Oranges Band) opens. Doors 8:30 p.m. $10.

Soundgarden recently released a (live) album (recorded in 1996), reunited, and booked a tour. Now that Chris Cornell is trying to forget his terrible Timbaland-produced solo album, he's forcing us to remember the '90s. The Mars Volta opens. Doors at 7:30 p.m. Tickets still available at $59.50 plus the usual fees.

Jen Shyu, Violet, and Safe Fast and Effective play Bella Cafe as part of the Dave Mann/Sonic Circuits-curated concert series at the restaurant. 8 p.m. $5.

The U Street Music Hall hosts a tribute to Kristen Bell (Kristen Renee Wolcott Bell), a local woman who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash on the Capital Beltway June 8. DJs Gavin Holland, Jackie O, Keenan, The Nobis, and a bunch of others will DJ and play live to raise proceeds for a trust fund set up for Bell's two-year-old son Conan. 8 p.m. $5 minimum donation.

DANCE

The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet's master class ends at noon today, but you can still catch their performance at Wolf Trap's Filene Center tonight at 8:30 p.m. The company is presenting a Wolf Trap commission by contemporary choreographer Jorma Elo. 8:30 p.m. $4 lawn tickets, $40 in-house.

BOOKS

Musician and jazz historian Ricky Riccardi stops by Politics & Prose to talk about What A Wonderful World, his book about the latter career of Louis Armstrong. 7 p.m. Free.

THE ONLY PLACE YOU WILL HEAR ERIK WØLLO TONIGHT

Washington Post music critic (disclosure: my former colleague) Chris Richards DJs his monthly new age night, Glide, at Café Saint-Ex tonight. It's the best place in this town to hear tranquil hums, warm synth waves, and other pleasing sounds of the universe while cramming sweet potato fries into your face. 9 p.m. Free.

I listened to the five tracks that comprise Phantom on the Horizon over 40 times (some tracks more than others) during the process of reviewing the Fall of Troy's new album for the dead-tree version of City Paper. As a result, I can sort of hum at least one guitar riff, which you can listen to below (and nobody hums to prog unless that prog is Rush).

But I'm not sure if listening to an album as many times as I did is good for the review process. Stuff that I didn't like the first time around grew on me, though that fact didn't make it into my review (the 400-word limit doesn't leave much room for a discussion of personal listening habits). On the other hand, aspects that stood out at first–red-hot guitar solos and great screaming come to mind–gradually faded as I grasped the significance of the album as a complete composition. Compared to other media for criticism, it's easy and–taking  a random sample from the music critics I know personally–commonplace for us to fall for the music we're supposed to be reviewing skeptically. (Why is it that good film critics seldom have this problem?)

However, I can think of some great albums (Say Anything's ...Is a Real Boy) and great bands (Radiohead) that I had to listen to over and over again before I saw what was so great about them.

For your listening pleasure, a few seconds of "A Strange Conversation," the second "chapter" on FoT's Phantom on the Horizon:

And here's a snippet from the review (or you can just read the whole thing):

"[I]t’s a worthwhile listen for anyone looking to dip a toe a into contemporary mainstream prog scene led by Coheed and Cambria, blending screamo vocals and mathcore rhythms with punk antics and an art-school sensibility. That’s a lot to pack into a tune, and Fall of Troy has recorded plenty of inaccessible or just plain noisy music in the past. (“Whacko Jacko Steals the Elephant Man’s Bones,” from 2005’s Doppleganger, oscillates between cacophonous technical sections and tuneless, distorted interludes.)"

I want to clarify that I don't think Coheed (who I used as a gold standard of sorts) is mainstream, or that there's any such thing as "mainstream prog," but that within prog you can find accessible and less-accessible music (big, resounding "duh"). Coheed and Cambria, the Fall of Troy, and–to a lesser extent–the Mars Volta are easier listening than Dream Theater and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Behold...The Arctopus–that's what earned FoT and Coheed the mainstream tag.

I still haven't decided if Phantom will make my top-10 list. I'd like to include at least one experimental/prog act, and I'm currently considering Idiot Pilot's reissued EP Heart is Long–even though it falls entirely on the experimental side.

Would anybody care to plug a 2008 prog album?