Numbers Game

Theta Naught's website claims that the band's musical mastery, the precise way it builds its subsonic rhythms and melodic interludes, actually stems from its "brilliant use of mathematical equations and sound declensions." The bio goes on to paint a scintillatingly hyperbolic picture of the bandmate geniuses working on everything from European politics to refrigerator time machines. And while the members of this Salt Lake City quintet might not be accomplishing everything they profess, it's only because they've been too busy touring Japan and examining the fluid dynamics of secondhand smoke in clubs.

Rhinoceropolis hosts Theta Naught tonight at 8 p.m. for an evening of experimental words and music. It's a fitting niche for a band that haunts with its manipulated loops, then immediately wipes your memory clean with the next song's oceanic rhythms. But what else would you expect from a group that writes its rhythm parts in binary code and says that phi is its biggest influence?

CJ Boyd, a ramblin' jazz-folk soloist making his way back and forth across the U.S., opens for Naught at Rhinoceropolis, 3553 Brighton Boulevard ($5), and again tomorrow at the Rock N Soul Cafe, 5290 Arapahoe Avenue in Boulder ($5-$7). For information on the Denver show, e-mail rhinoceropolis@hotmail.com; for the Boulder performance, call 303-443-5108.
Thu., June 28, 9 p.m.