New York native Saul Williams may never have found the perfect way to translate his big personality and manic energy into an exceptional album—last year’s collaboration with Trent Reznor, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust!, felt at times like hand-to-hand combat—but he remains a top-tier showman. Live, he’s unhinged, still rapping with ferocity and singing with naïve force. Tonight, he teams up with Brooklyn’s Dragons of Zynth, whose debut, Coronation Thieves (produced by TV on the Radio’s David Sitek), certainly owes Williams’s long-gone debut, Amethyst Rock Star, a tiny debt. In the main, though, they’re deliriously untethered, a band unafraid of the possibilities of space, in all senses.
Wed., April 9, 8 p.m., 2008