Since he's renowned for his eccentric collaborations with the Lounge Lizards and John Zorn, it was inevitable that guitarist Marc Ribot wouldn't hear Cuban music quite the same way as anybody else. Surrounded by his four-piece band, known as Los Cubanos Postizos, Ribot set about a cluster of pieces by the Cuban band-leader Arsenio Rodriguez as if determined to batter them to pieces.
He began with a sleepy Latin shuffle that mooched along pleasantly enough, until abruptly disfigured by bursts of frenetic string-thrashing. When he'd had enough of that, he launched into a blast of turbo-powered salsa remarkable for its abrasiveness. By the time he had led his quartet into a devious quagmire of a rumba, you began to fear that the damage to Cuba's tourist economy could be serious and long-lasting.
The Cubanos Postizos bristle with expertise, not least the Rodriguezes (EJ and Roberto) on percussion and drums, but you sometimes wish that Ribot would lay off the wackiness. His angular playing made him worthy of Elvis Costello's old pseudonym, Little Hands of Concrete.
Bill-topper John Scofield arrived at the Barbican in the nick of time, having apparently taken 14 hours to get from Toulon to London. Hence there was a tentative air about the first numbers as his band adjusted instrument settings. Scofield seemed relieved merely to find that his guitar was plugged in.
However, his young band soon began to display their attacking qualities. Avi Bortnick supplies jittery Chic-like rhythm guitar, while drummer Adam Deitch and bassist Jesse Murphy concoct a furious funk-rock fusion underneath. Meanwhile Scofield ambles professorially around the front of the stage, peeling off long, fluid lines with his distinctive hot tone.
But is this the most propitious setting for Scofield's talents? The inner-city hardness of the band sometimes makes it feel like John Scofield meets the Beastie Boys, and pieces such as Idio-Funk or The Jungle don't leave the leader many options. To be heard at all, he has to play fast and loud, neglecting his expansive, ballady tendencies. Only in the concluding piece, an airier composition by Bortnick, was Scofield able to deploy some lyrical phrasing in octaves. Overall, the set had the incomplete feeling of a work in progress.
