HIPHOP ROYALTY SHABAZZ PALACES BLACK UP THE HYPE

The Stranger has gushed loads of praise upon Shabazz Palaces over the last two years. While such widespread effusiveness breeds skepticism, in this case the hype's justified. The Seattle hiphop collective, led by MC/producer Ishmael Butler, really is making some of the genre's most advanced music. Their new Sub Pop full-length, Black Up, sounds rich and oblique, like something beamed back to 2011 from a future where articulacy, paradox, parable, and allusion carry more weight than catchphrases, profanity, and banal, materialistic observations. Sonically, Black Up is a mosaic of oddity that will take several listens to fully intuit, yet it's not alienating; rather, it's an engrossing, otherworldly aural environment in which avant jazz rubs frequencies with dubstep and future funk, while a stoic, uncorny soulfulness infiltrates every bar. "This shit is way too advanced," guest MCs THEESatisfaction intone at the end of "Swerve. The Reeping of All That Is Worthwhile (Noir Not Withstanding)," yet another truth on an album full of 'em. Neumos, 8 pm, $15, 21+; also Fri July 1.

SF INVASION BY DUBSTEPPER EPROM

The beat maniacs who run the Boom Blap! collective have booked Eprom (San Francisco producer Alexander Dennis), who's making seismic waves on the international dubstep circuit. Eprom's productions contain a profusion of extreme sounds, some sublime, some ridiculous, all fun. On top of these, his beats are geared to vibrate the rib cages of the outermost outdoor-festivalgoers. While they verge on brostep's clownish exaggeration, Eprom's tracks thankfully possess more finesse than do those by the practitioners of that sub-subgenre. With Jillian Ann, Kat1lyst, Hz Donut, Sonny Chiba, Headie, Dirty Byrdz. Contour, 8 pm, free, 21+.

EXPERIMENTALIST IRR. APP. (EXT.)

Now for something completely different... Seattle has the privilege again of hosting irr. app. (ext.)—San Francisco's Matthew Waldron—for a performance. His early recordings trafficked in the fractured sonic surrealism favored by Nurse with Wound, where structural non sequiturs and bizarre textures reign. Waldron's more recent releases plunge headlong into oracular dronescraping. I've not heard the recent collaborative LP with Seattle noise miscreants (and billmates) Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Skeletal Copula Remains, but all indicators point toward it being a real nightmare-generator. Come and get baffled. With the Rita, Greifer, Microscopic Suffering, Drowner. Josephine, 9 pm.