Aqui

"What's it gonna be -- pleasure or action?" wails Stephonik X of Aqui on "Roll," a song from the group's welt-raising debut, The First Trip Out. The Brooklyn outfit is a maelstrom of noise and electricity, a metal-inflicted mutation of art, punk and rock just as likely to make eyeballs roll back in ecstasy as it is to gouge them out. At first glance, X and her cohorts are flirting with the avant-cartoon aesthetic of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; at the same time, they aren't afraid to dive headfirst into the vicious calculus of Tomahawk and Rush, dicing intricate riffs with grinding textures that turn bowels to sludge and synapses into firecrackers. Pleasure versus action? Given Aqui's rapturous, hyperkinetic charge, that's not an either/or scenario