Disco Biscuits Bring Focused Jamming to the El Rey

Jam bands exist on the far frontiers of rock’s imagination, where normal rules don’t apply and unwieldy ambition is a virtue.

Pittsburgh quartet Disco Biscuits have staked their claim to a small part of this terrain and have made the most of it. The band’s performance at the El Rey Theatre on Thursday was both amorphous and intensely focused.

The group’s compositions wound their way through furious chord and tempo changes, not unlike its contemporaries Phish, but rather than settle into leisurely jams, the Disco Biscuits pick up their cues from dance music.

On its albums, the Biscos use drum machines and breakbeats, making its connection to techno music more explicit, but at the El Rey, it was strictly a man-made thing. The band’s version of trance was a hypnotic groove grounded in insistent, driving beats and swirling arabesques of notes provided by guitarist Jon Gutwillig.

Songs would melt into abstract interludes that were effectively sustained for long stretches. Even at its most fancifully psychedelic, there was always a strong rhythmic center of gravity; the band never stopped working hard onstage. Guitarist Gutwillig, who sang lead on all the band’s material, was a fluid soloist, but he knew when to lay back and blend into the sonic scenery when it was required.