CHiPS

Understand one thing: Despite the retro-sounding handle, CHIPS are anything but an Eighties nostalgia act. Granted, there might be a few traces of no wave in the duo's musical DNA, as their eponymous innova debut would seem to indicate, but the same could be said of surf music, bebop, and Armenian folk melodies, to name but a few of the tactical options these young men wield so wildly and so well. 

If anything, drummer Sean Noonan (who also drives THE HUB) and guitarist Aram Bajakian have the lion's share of their rhizomes planted firmly in the neophilic neighborhood also occupied by John Zorn, Ruins, Fred Frith, and Cul de Sac. It's a sunny grove (except when it storms), where jazz, rock, and all kinds of experimentation converge freely and openly—without shame, fear, or the threat of a bad hangover. And, like their esteemed peers, CHIPS frolic.