THE HUB Wardrobe, Leeds
The Guardian, UK, May 9, 2001

James Griffiths
**** out of *****

New York three-piece THE HUB invade the stage like naughty school children, taking up their instruments with manic glee before making the most shocking racket ever played under the name of jazz.

Tim Dahl starts as he means to go on, his bass guitar making obscene belching noises, while Sean Noonan’s snare drum cracks like a revolver going off. Dan Magay on saxophone somehow holds his own amid the maelstrom, curling his sinewy lines that refuse to be intimidated. The band’s music is probably best described as free jazz meets death metal inside the blades of a combine harvester. There is an illusion of chaos-but the presence of sheet music and the expressions of fierce concentration give the game away. This is tightly disclipined composition, the comical stops and starts having been meticulously rehearsed.

The musicians perform with such wild abandon that their antics resemble performance art. Behind the drums, Noonan contorts his body jerking spasmodically as if he’s just stuck his fingers in an electric light socket. He has an extremely unorthodox approach, waving his limbs about in a manner guaranteed to horrify jazz purists, and he occasionally attacks his cymbals in mock rage.

After an hour and a half of this preposterously fiddly noise, your ears start to tire. Just how entertaining the HUB’s music would be with out the fun of actually watching them play is open to question, although they will have no difficulty in cornering the musical masochist market.

Tonight, they remain scintillating and almost frighteningly intense. Everyone laughs when Tim Dahl gleefully announces that the band intend to smash up their hotel rooms after the gig, but it is surprisingly easy to believe him.

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