FRIDAY

Having spent most of the ’90s alongside Aphex Twin as an avatar of England’s electronic vanguard, Autechre managed to outsmart the ill-fated IDM tag by hard-wiring the band’s communal cerebrum straight into the motherboard. The result: all brain. By 2001’s dense, arrhythmic Confield, the duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown was tweaking on android synapses, making synthetic sounds that puttered and percolated like a hacked program self-destructing. There was no computer-to-human interface, just raw data. But with this year’s Untilted, Autechre takes a sideways step onto the dance floor. The tones may still be made of titanium, but the calibrated rhythms they form have more in common with favela funk and the drippy gloom of eskibeat than the band’s usual command-line drones. Joining the pair tonight are fellow blip spotters SND. With no new sound files made public since 2002, the performance, let’s hope, will provide a progress report on the group’s long-awaited upgrade of its signature click ’n’ cut etherea. Rob Hall, head of the Skam record label and member of Autechre spinoff Gescom, rounds out the bill, manning the needle and toggle in a DJ set. Autechre plays with SND and Hall at 9:30 p.m. Friday, May 6, on the Black Cat’s Mainstage, 1811 14th St. NW. $15. (202) 667-7960. (Bernardo Rondeau)