A+E

I like it when a new group I haven’t heard before drops a line to let me know about an upcoming gig because I am given the chance to see what the music makers (and the dreamers of dreams, per Roald Dahl writing as Willy Wonka quoting the poet Arthur O’Shaugnessy) are up to. But things really line up and start sparking and twitching for me with the holy amperage of life when I actually love the music they send. I got treated to just that sort of galvanic shock this week when Liz, aka Trash Panda, from the new Eureka duo Hermit Crab sent me the goods: a link to their latest work, The Earth is Visible from Space. Dear lord of the deadly glowing seas, what a beautiful, stuttering mess of sputtering beats, all chopping through a tideline of battered shoreline debris and foamy toxic unguents. Samples, beats, sax, voices, all funk-scuttling over an ambient mapped fallout zone of music, land-mining Mother Nature with barbs of exploded pop culture and crooning about the mess. This trash is a blast and I love it. I beg you to see, hear and fear for yourself what I mean, which you can do at the Miniplex at 9 p.m. for $10. B. Writes provides R&B support and album cover artist Julia Finkelstein will be making live paintings. Put your ear to page and hear the thwack, because I just stamped this one with my “gig of the week” notary mallet.