The ungodly sounds of the Minneapolis enigmas

By George Chen

CONSIDER THIS LITMUS test for a blind date: can your intended tolerate, let alone enjoy, grown-ups rolling around a SoMa warehouse making an ungodly racket and tearing down a string of Christmas lights for five minutes? If the answer is yes, skip dinner and buy a ring. Oh yes, and take them to see Cock E.S.P. this week.

Since 1994 the Minneapolis group have been churning out legendary live shows, harsh collisions of midair molecule displacement. Maybe it's the atmosphere of desperation and awareness of how ridiculous it looks to wear a tinfoil mask and writhing on the floor with a contact mic on sheet metal, but their absurd confidence comes off as chutzpah – it's more like Chris Elliott's Get a Life than Jackass. My first exposure to them was a snippet on the Ass High and Left of Center video compilation (you can rent this at Aquarius Records) and apocryphal stories about them recording a live album that continues to roll tape after they've packed up all the equipment and left for home in their van.

Everything the band – which includes Emil Hagstrom, Matt Bacon, Elyse Perez, and Kazko Peasmith – put in their press releases or on their Web site seems like a put-on. They have just dropped a handful of compilation tracks on the unsuspecting world. It's worth revisiting the group's last studio album too.

Cock E.S.P., The Pride of North American Noise (Breathmint/Carbon/Ecstatic Peace/Ignivomous/SunShip) Yes, it took five labels to put this 2001 disc together. Stomping on your face with a boot of overdriven signal crunch, feedback bursts, and inhuman screams, the trio also let in some clarinet (courtesy of Flying Luttenbacher Weasel Walter), violin, and a remix job by equally prank-minded grime fiends V/VM. The 18 tracks seem to blend together, but there are some gradations; "Heel in the Eye" sounds like a radio succumbing to a deep fryer, while "The Pain I Feel Inside" sandpapers a dead rock riff into dust.

Various artists, Blackbean's Dirty Little Secret (Blackbean and Placenta Tape Club) Sandwiched between the cut-up assault of Bastard Noise man John Weise (in the guise of Sissy Spacek) and the wafting ethereal female vocalists of Charalambides, the two-minute wail of Cock E.S.P. is a muted attempt at subtlety bookended by the trademark sound burst. Male and female voices cycle through static filters, sounding as though they're coming through an apartment wall, which just makes the ending all the more abrupt. BBPTC head Mike Landucci loads this comp up with other randoms like Gang Wizard, Noxagt, Reynols, and Aube.

Various artists, Why Is Anything Forbidden? A Tribute to No Limit Records (Deathbomb Arc) The ambitious, and perhaps just wrong, project from independent label Deathbomb Arc supposedly pays tribute to another indie empire, Master P's No Limit Records. Amid remixes and covers from southern Californians like Radio Vago, Books on Tape, and Squab, the contributions of Cock E.S.P., with the heretofore unknown DJ Enormous Genitals, are the most confusing. Some chopped-up beat samples are run through a blender on "puree" and given a pissbath of feedback and granular pummel on the defiant "(Never Gonna) Bounce." Oddly enough, this cover treatment seems like the most sincere mode the group can muster.

Cock E.S.P. play with U Can Unlearn Guitar and Madame Chao Wed/13, 10 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $5. (415) 0923.