Darcy James Argue redux

Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society
Fri., June 5, 8pm. $12. International House, 3701 Chestnut St. 215-895-6546 www.arsnovaworkshop.com

Vancouver-born composer Darcy James Argue came to New York via Boston and launched what he calls a “steampunk big band,” Secret Society, in which he does not play an instrument. The name is a riff on the insularity of jazz and a deconstruction of that very notion, furthering Argue’s belief that big bands can and should mate with other musical idioms and produce all sorts of bastard children. Infernal Machines, the band’s debut, is a riot of harmonic sophistication, rock energy and charged improv, with brass-and-reeds sonorities and electric guitar atmospherics evoking new sonic worlds and putting Argue on the cross-disciplinary musical map in a big way. — David R. Adler