ROCK MUSIC TV on the Radio zaps boundaries

The unique sound is what it is, so take it or leave it.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
AUSTIN, Texas -- The sky is the color of steel, there's a whisper of rain in the air and, being the last week of South by Southwest, there's plenty of fully indoor rock 'n' roll activity all over downtown.
But that hasn't stopped a crowd from jamming onto the outdoor patio at the Caucus to see TV on the Radio, the New York City band that not only is at the center of a hurricane of hype but may just be managing to upend some stereotypes about race, rock and musical styles.
Onstage are five guys -- four black, one white -- blending sounds like new-generation alchemists. Doo-wop and R & amp;B-influenced vocals cascade into edgy art-rock; old Motown meets new Manhattan. It's Radiohead on a ride through America. It's Bobby McFerrin gone boho. It's an a cappella version of "Mr. Grieves," a song by long-gone alt-rock pioneers the Pixies.
It's not
What it's not is what the music industry has straitjacketed as black music. It's not hip-hop. It's not funk. It's not crunk. It doesn't even self-consciously call attention to itself as being black rock the way, say, Living Colour or the Busboys did in decades past. On its two releases, the "Young Liars" EP and the just-released full-length "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes," TV on the Radio's sound simply is what it is. Take it or leave it.
The whole race question leaves TVOR's main man, Tunde Adebimpe, a bit perplexed. An animator and painter, Adebimpe says he was equally concerned by perceived racial restrictions in the art world. It hit home with him when he was trying to sell his comics at a comic-book convention.
"I was handing out my comics and someone, a friend, came up to me and said 'It must be weird for you,'" Adebimpe recalls backstage at the Caucus. "I said, 'Why?' And he said you're the only African American in a genre that's geared to young, white males. I said, 'It wasn't weird to me until you mentioned it.'"
Became depressed
He says the encounter depressed him so much he didn't draw for two years. An overreaction perhaps, but with music, Adebimpe's story might have a different ending.
"I'm really proud when African-American kids come up to me and say, 'I'm so happy to see someone who looks like me making this kind of music,'" he says.
Adebimpe wasn't even planning to start a band, but he had recorded some vocal ideas on a four-track.
"I couldn't play an instrument, so I was using my voice as an instrument," he says, recalling how the emphasis on voice and harmony came about. "I like [Nigerian] Yoruba music with the call and response. It's so immediate. Everyone has a voice inside them. It can touch something inside you, like the blues and Robert Johnson."
It just so happened that a new roommate in the Brooklyn loft he shared, Dave Sitek, was a guitarist and had some musical ideas of his own. The two found that their styles worked well together. And both of them had a love of Radiohead. They even recorded a group of songs called "OK Calculator," a nod to Radiohead's "OK Computer."
Bowled over
Adebimpe says they weren't really looking for a record deal, but an exec at the indie Touch and Go Records was so bowled over by what he'd heard that he wanted to sign the band.
"I was working on an animation job and Dave called me," says Adebimpe of how he found out he had a record deal. "I didn't believe him."
Word started to spread from the band's stamping grounds in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn: TV on the Radio was a band to watch.
TVOR expanded to a five-piece band, including vocalist/guitarist Kyp Malone, drummer Jaleel Bunton and bassist Gerard Smith.