10/1: Anti-Pop Consortium at the Grog Shop

Anti-Pop Consortium don’t really think of hip-hip as hip-hop. The avant-rap group thinks of sounds as building materials and follows the possibilities without sticking to genre signposts. Of course, most of the time this manifests itself as something most easily labeled rap, but there seems to be only a cursory relationship. The group works electric neo-soul, IDM head-nodders, vicious guitar lines, operatic arias, stream-of-consciousness lines and structural unorthodoxy worthy of e.e. cummings into its mix, resulting in some of the most interesting — and boundary-pushing — hip-hop experimentalism of the past decade. Think of them as a sort of conceptual amalgam of the sounds and ideologies of like-minded sonic adventurers Frank Zappa, Sun Ra and Radiohead. Reunited in 2007 after a five-year hiatus (when members explored individual musical paths), Anti-Pop Consortium are now touring behind their fourth album, Fluorescent Black. MuAmin Collective, Arte Povera and Ay (of Ken Rei) open at 8 p.m. at the Grog Shop (2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Hts., 216.321.5588). Tickets: $10. — Nicholas Hall