Best Use of Duct Tape by a Musical Act

While many of the city's electronic musicians have sold their souls for shiny new Titanium PowerBooks, Crack: We Are Rock knows that sleeker ain't always better. The group boasts a motley assortment of vintage keyboards, drum machines, noise boxes, and other gizmos, all seemingly held together with patch cords, paper clips, and prayers. The band's rhythms are no less unstable: Beneath the rock-steady pulse of the quartet's jackhammer beats, there's a sense of imminent dissolution, as though the Y2K bug were finally visiting itself upon the sequencers. Fortunately, Crack: WAR's frontwomen, Le Kim and L'Erin, are more than adept at holding it together while rhythm-wrasslers King Riff and Obscuratron do battle with the forces of EQ. Dressed in matching outfits combining the best (and sometimes worst) elements of the disco and new wave eras, Crack: WAR's divas exude a formidable, forbidding sexuality while barking out songs like "Cold as Ice" and "Hooker Leg." The government warnings are true: This stuff is dangerously addictive.