In this clash of titans, one of them won

The night was billed as “Tortoise vs. the Scientist,” a live dub mix, and in this clash of avant giants at the Echo on Thursday, Tortoise definitely got the better of the exchange. The five-piece “post-rock” band from Chicago is no stranger to dub experimentalism, and it came out with a challenge, offering a kind of jammy, two-drummer jazz rock, like the Can channeling Weather Report or Phish playing Zappa’s take on Brazilian samba.

That didn’t leave much room for the Scientist to enter the mix from behind the soundboard. The Jamaican producer (real name: Overton Brown) needed some space between notes and some repetition to build up one of his psychedelic dubs. Tortoise’s prog-rock aversion to both kept him at bay.

Many of the pieces featured frenetic funk drumming by John Herndon and John McEntire, often both at once, forcing Scientist to just squeeze in where he could. Well into the set, a repeated bass and drums figure emerged and Scientist pounced, adding delay to the snare, shoving Doug McComb’s bass to a rumble and scattering bits of shattered echo that felt like vinyl-record pop, to achieve an effect somewhat like David Essex’s “Rock On.”

The tune that followed was magnificent, a towering collaboration in which the churning drums and bass line seemed to lift away from Tortoise’s composition itself as Scientist used dub’s heavy delay and reverb not to build a trance-like wobble but to deconstruct the whole song, separating the parts and letting the beat collapse under its own weight. It was a kind of anti-dub, an absolutely surprising innovation.

Overall, however, his touch was light, leaving the worshipful Tortoise fans to their unadulterated album cuts, and making this meeting seem like an opportunity missed.