Talibam! with Sam Kulik

The ubiquitous brainiacs behind Brooklyn's maniacally creative and hilarious duo Talibam!--beardo keyboards squelcher Matt Mottel and bizarro drums wizard Kevin Shea--are airing out their gripes, sort of, as they chill in their Wall Street studio at the Swing Space, an underground bank vault turned artistic bunker. First packaged as 'avant-jazz' when Talibam! formed in 2003, the term has stuck, and alas, Mottel and Shea are ready for something different. Enter their preferred calling-card: 'Stylish Production Team.' "We're creative musicians," says Mottel. That term, 'creative music,' is a William Parker term. He'd say 'I am not playing free jazz. I play creative music.' I like to think we play creative music."

Calling Talibam!'s 2009 apotheosis, Boogie in the Breeze Blocks "creative music" is quite the understatement. That LP firmed their current trajectory towards dead serious experimentalism fused with shits-n-giggles trippiness. On their ESP-Disk debut, the twosome melded their aesthetic to perfection: the free jazz moxie, the classic rock and metal flash and the Zappa meets Peanuts fuckfoolery. "Our band started in 2003 primarily as a free improv unit," Mottel says. "But as a band should do--develop and grow--we basically became, as a duo, an extreme punk rock organ-drums psych unit with free elements and been playing a tight set list the last two years. Once you get tagged with 'avant-jazz,' especially by critics, that really stays and that's the only thing they associate with the band."