Last week at The Studio at Webster Hall, Long Island-based trio, Nature of City, masterminded by bassist/vocalist Josh Pillbox, played their first show of 2011. NOC donned rubber Nixon masks as the whispering chants and swirls of dissonance of “American Dream” radiated from the stage. The band revealed their faces for the avant-garde take on funk, jazz, and metal, “Big Tommy”, and took a turn for the eerily melodic of “Binomial Pharmaclature,” the ticking time bomb of heavy distortion and haunting vocals of “Daddy Alarm Clock,” and the polyrhythmic duals between syncopated bass lines and shredding guitar solos of “Six Kinds of Wednesday”. Closing with the nightmarish and intricate interplay of pitch-shifting vocals and echoing instrumentation of “Ugly Like Me,” NOC’s set left the audience craving more. The good news is that Nature of City plan to release their debut LP, “Spacemen Need Earthsuits,” (in the picture) in April of this year. – Meijin Bruttomesso