DJ Shadow: All Bases Covered

Brooklyn Bowl
Dec. 11

DJ Shadow performing in London in October. Joseph Okpako/Redferns/Getty Images

In 1996, Bay Area crate-digger Josh Davis released "Endtroducing," his first full-length album as DJ Shadow. And while his credentials as a hip-hop DJ were formidable, it wasn't until he began to explore the infinite possibilities of sample-based music—beyond mere backing tracks for rappers—that his music rose to worldwide prominence. "Endtroducing" remains visionary in its blending of disparate musical styles, the end result sounding unlike its components. Mash-ups and sample-based classics that followed, from acts like the Avalanches and Girl Talk, would be unthinkable without DJ Shadow's example. Last year's exasperating "The Less You Know the Better" continued to dig into the dustiest of corners (veering from West Coast rap strain hyphy to metal and Europop at one stretch), but Shadow rightfully remains one of the most in-demand DJs in the world. He comes to Brooklyn in support of a new limited-edition boxed set that comes with seven CDs, a DVD, a 12-inch record and a 12-page book.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards mark a half-century in Brooklyn. Jim Dyson/Redferns/Getty Images

The Rolling Stones

Barclays Center
620 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, (212) 359-6387

This year, the Rolling Stones are marking 50 years together as a band, but not with any new music. (In fact, the Stones' recent career overview, "GRRR!," is a rather parsimonious collection from a band with a dozen greatest-hits packages on shelves.) During the past month, the group released a new film, the documentary "Crossfire Hurricane," unearthed another film dating from 1965, and convinced the Museum of Modern Art to host a comprehensive film retrospective covering a half-century of work by directors ranging from Jean-Luc Godard and the Maysles Brothers to Robert Frank. Great as those films are, the Stones still comfortably rest their enormous reputation on their pageant-like live shows—despite a combined age of 273. Saturday's concert marks the Stones' first stateside show for their celebratory tour, "50 and Counting." How many perpetual rock classics can they squeeze into one set? Who's counting? (The band will move on to the Prudential Center in Newark on Dec. 13 and 15.)

Neil Hagerty, right, leads a reconstituted Royal Trux to Greenpoint. Richard Peterson

Royal Trux Performing 'Twin Infinitives'

St. Vitus Bar
1120 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn

During college rock's post-Nirvana heyday, when major labels went on a national signing spree, few deals were as confounding as the Washington, D.C., duo Royal Trux winding up on Virgin Records. While guitarist Neil Hagerty had traces of the Rolling Stones in his licks (his old band, Pussy Galore, once recorded a song-by-song cover of "Exile on Main Street"), Royal Trux's 1990 ferocious double album, "Twin Infinitives," remains one of the more inscrutable major-label albums in rock lore, more akin to Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" than to Sonic Youth's comparatively accessible "Daydream Nation." The intervening two decades have done little to blunt the bleak, dense, heroin-induced sound of "Twin Infinitives." And while the duo has ignored calls to reform (they broke up in 2001), Mr. Hagerty has convened a group to perform this sphinx-like album live for a night in Brooklyn.

Animal Collective

Terminal 5

Outliers on the New York music scene at the beginning of the 21st century, making psychedelic noise onstage while wearing masks and facepaint, the Brooklyn foursome (via Baltimore) Animal Collective slowly made inroads toward indie-pop acceptance. But the group did it in its own distinctive manner, boldly mixing folk, Afro-pop, minimal techno and much more to its music. By decade's end, having released a new full-length album almost every year, Animal Collective was a dominant paradigm-shifter, inspiring and influencing a new generation of bands ranging from Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors to MGMT and Neon Indian. A new album, the spiky and dense "Centipede Hz," finds the band continuing to widen its sonic palette. In concert, they adhere to their psychedelic roots, earning legions of listeners as a vivid jam-band as a result.

The Coup

Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St., (212) 533-2111

When the Coup first blipped up amid the Bay Area's fertile '90s hip-hop scene, the trio was more outspoken than its tongue-twisting peers, spiking its wordplay with trenchant political observations. Despite having to replace the crude, badly timed cover to its 2001 album "Party Music" (which featured MC Boots Riley and DJ Pam the Funkstress in front of the World Trade Center) with a more innocuous image, the Coup remained provocateurs with singles like "5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O." and "Ghetto Manifesto." What makes the Coup's politics palatable, though, is the funky live band backing Mr. Riley, as evidenced on a new album, "Sorry to Bother You." So even if Mr. Riley identifies himself as a communist on Bill Maher's HBO show, the band remembers the "party" part of that equation. With art-punk duo Japanther.