Also this issue: Mehta Physics Meet the man who’s turning the Kimmel into a world-music hot spot. -A.D. Amorosi Matter of Import The Brit in Big Sandy’s court. -Mary Armstrong Blistered in the Sun Unwrapping the Summer Tour Package. -Jesse Delaney The Kills -Sam Adams The Sick Lipstick -Maura Johnston 4 Way Street -Nicole Pensiero Richard Thompson -Sam Adams Jamaican Dave's Birthday Bash -Ainé Ardon-Doley

July 17-23, 2003

musicpicks

Krakatoa

Rock/pop

To call once-Philadelphians Krakatoa "progressive" would be to spit in their eye. Like Kraftwerk, whose 1978 song "The Robots" the band riffs on as the title of their new disc We Are The Rowboats (Cuneiform), Krakatoa goes about its business, smirking sidelong all the while. With beginnings as The Lost Art of Puppet Orchestra, the now Brooklyn-based band ÷ keyboardist Valerie Opielski, bassist Ted Casterline, drummer Ely Levin and violinist Glendon Jones ÷ stretches the boundaries of and blurs the lines between rock, jazz and theatrical mayhem. Yes, the band started out backing puppets, and songs like ãSabre Danceä leave you little choice but to imagine tiny fake humans jigging, perhaps with cutlery taped to their little marionette hands. On ãAlbatross to Betatron,ä you get spaceadelic funk peppered with, um, of course, Latin rhythms. They give a nod to their hometown, I think, on ãPhiladelcula,ä an ominous, brooding march into the fog, while ãOrange Whistleâsä first minute and a half is a pastoral sway-along that breaks out into full-on speed violin. A lot of instrumental music gets bogged down in self-importance, but Krakatoa might as well play wearing clown noses.

Sat., July 19, 9 p.m., $8, with Calvin Weston’s Big Tree, Tritone, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475.

—Brian Howard