After watching Trick Deck open tonight's show at the Rainbow, I was reminded of something a friend once said about multi-instrument-playing and/or "renaissance" artists: They lack the focus to ever be great at any single instrument.

Mark Wand obviously doesn't see it that way. He began the Trick Deck show unaccompanied, with a keyboard before him and stacks of equipment next to him (which included a DAT machine and all sorts of buttons). He had an effects pedal at his feet and a little instrument around his neck called a wind controller, which he used to play bass lines by blowing through it like a recorder. Wand even busted out a saxophone during several songs to accompany a variety of prerecorded beats and samples; he would access them by pushing "play" on the DAT machine, or a single key on his synthesizer. And while it was interesting to see someone doing essentially a DJ set (think Howie B. or Ming & FS) more organically than DJs, overall, Wand's set was rendered sloppy in places because he was too busy trying to make every noise in the world.

There were moments in the set when all this sound was happening--Wand was just dancing, not playing anything, or just playing a single note on the electric saxophone--where I felt sort of cheated; as though I should have been allowed to sit in a more comfortable place, just listening to a CD of his music instead of watching him performing it "live."

Many of the beats Wand played were abstracted, but a great deal of his set was drum and bass, breakbeats, and hiphop, most of which was threaded throughout a very dub-inflected foundation. In the beginning it was easy to appreciate the strange breaks--the manner in which individual instruments would cut in and out of the tracks as Wand overlaid vocal samples of Trick Deck's singer, Christa Wells (who was not present that evening). But then the show started getting repetitive, until an excellent bass player, Anders Burggren, joined Wand onstage. The band was quickly joined by a drummer as well, Kevin Sawka. The rhythm section was spectacular. Burggren was nimble and deadlocked into gorgeous, organic drum and bass patterns with Sawka. (Sawka was the real star here. He was so good that I kept thinking of the first time I watched FCS North's Andy Sells play.)

When the band became a three-piece, Wand got a bit more adventurous with his saxophone, and I hoped he would prove to be a better player than I thought he was; but for the most part, Wand never cut loose on any instrument.

About 10 people watched this show. I got the feeling, as Wand danced and played with his wind controller, that he was very pleased with how things were going. He was obviously the band's composer and leader. He kept shouting, "One more!" or "Two more!" to cue the others as to how many more measures he wanted them to play. At one point, Wand looked at his exceptional bass player and moved his arm through the air, as though he were momentarily a conductor. It was strange to see someone's ego so intimately in that moment.

By the end, the jamming had gone on too long, and I felt like I was at a Phish concert. Perhaps I was too sober. Perhaps I was paying too much attention to the self-indulgent dalliances of a would-be electronic wonder boy to truly enjoy myself.