The artists at Johnny La Rock‘s monthly Experimental Nights don’t experiment with music — they weaponize it, improvising and adapting like true guerrillas. This month’s show features live techno from Sonic Disturbance, on-the-fly hip-hop and electronica from La Rock and Mush Mouth, and the incomparable work of Subroc, who makes music using old video-game consoles. And though it seems impossible to top “Theme From Super Mario Brothers,” hey, someone’s gotta try.

This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2004.