If your mind is in a whirl after perusing those endless lists of “bands to watch” in magazines such as Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Spin, relax. Britpop band Kasabian is the real deal, and the U.K. sensation is playing Saturday night at Philadelphia’s Theatre of Living Arts, opening for The Music.

Kasabian’s self-titled debut, released late last year in England but unavailable in the U.S. until March 8, prompted one writer to describe the scruffy foursome as “the band for thirtysomethings who grew up on the Madchester scene of The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays.”

Pretty spot on, but it doesn’t go far enough. Kasabian, which last year placed several singles in the Top 20, has a better way with disquieting dance grooves than either the Roses or the Mondays, not to mention a trippy pop sense and brash attitude that equals Oasis, another common comparison point.

So if the group were putting on a dance party, what bands would Kasabian program?

Sergio Pizzorno, Kasabian’s lead guitarist, keyboardist and songwriter, offers an unexpected answer. “The Rolling Stones and The Beatles,” he says in a thickly accented voice via cell phone while en route to a photo shoot in New York City Tuesday. “Also Beck. They all make songs that you can get down to, songs with real grooves.”

“People misunderstand,” he adds. “We grew up listening to music from the late ’60s. We were heavily influenced by those drums and bass tracks.”

The group moniker selected by Pizzorno, singer Tom Meighan, bassist Chris Edwards and Christopher Karloff also is rooted in the late ’60s. Karloff came across the name Linda Kasabian — the pregnant driver of Charles Manson’s getaway car who later turned state’s witness — while reading a book on the Manson family, says Pizzorno. “We didn’t chose Kasabian because of anything to do with Manson,” he notes. “We chose it because of the sound.”

Kasabian’s musical sound has a built-in unpredictability. It can morph effortlessly, and take twists and turns without ever losing sight of where it wants to go.

For example, “Club Foot” piles layers and layers of synths atop tight guitar work before coming to a fluttering, flutey end. “We were watching a a Beach Boys documentary and saw they had a great kind of approach to making “Good Vibrations,”‘ says Pizzorno. “We wanted to approach “Club Foot’ the same way, to mess with the landscape and give the listener something to hold on to.” And the song’s subject matter? “Revenge and having it out,” Pizzorno replies.

Then there is “Processed Beat.” “That’s the first tune where we realized our [goal] of making music that was different and challenging,” says Pizzorno. “We took lines and phrases and ripped them up and reassembled them in strange ways, leading to thoughts like, “I don’t fret Chinese burns.”‘ (“Chinese burns” is Brit slang for twisting the skin on someone’s arm and leaving behind red marks.)

On “I.D.,” says Pizzorno, “we were trying for a DJ Shadow thing, molding prog hip-hop with punk rock, treating it dirty and being filthy,” while “Reason is Treason” blends “Kraut rock, psychedelic rock and glam with an undercurrent of makeup and sex.”

Before beginning this 20-day tour, Kasabian had played in America only once, in November at New York’s Bowery Ballroom.

But with Franz Ferdinand having pried open the door, Pizzorno believes Kasabian could be the next band to succeed in the Colonies.

And though now only an opening act, Pizzorno promises Kasabian will perform with the same ferocity it does as a headliner. “One thing we’re gonna do is play exactly as we do in England,” he says. “We’re gonna give you everything we … got. We may only have a half-hour, but it’s the best you’re gonna hear.”

Is there anything Pizzorno wants to see in America?

“I want to see the sun, because I’ve been deprived lately,” he says. “Maybe I’ll spend some time in San Diego.”

Any parting thoughts?

“Stay off the dope and enjoy your life.”

Kasabian, with headliner The Music and Morningwood, 8 p.m. Saturday, Theatre of Living Arts, 334 South St., Philadelphia, 215-922-1011. Tickets: $15.

JAZZ LOST AND FOUND

Bill Warfield’s frustration with jazz composition competitions that required applicants to be 35 years or younger was growing with the number of entry forms piling up on his desk.

So last year the 53-year-old head of Lehigh University’s music department inaugurated a search for a distinguished jazz composer between the ages of 40 and 60.

“I thought, “At least there’ll be one outlet for people of that lost generation [of jazz composers] between the young lions and the indisputable masters of the idiom,”‘ says Warfield.

The winner of the 2005 Jazz Composer Contest, Glenn Cashman, chairman of Colgate University’s jazz department, will be officially announced Saturday night at Zoellner Arts Center’s Baker Hall in Bethlehem and presented with a $1,000 cash prize.

Perhaps even more important, the New York Jazz Rep. Orchestra, a 14-member ensemble of Big Apple professionals directed by Warfield, will be on hand to record six pieces of the 45-year-old Cashman’s music — original compositions such as “The Circuit” and “Tomkat” as well as his arrangements of John Coltrane’s “Naima” and Ivan Lins’ “The Waters of March.”

“It’s contemporary big-band jazz,” says Warfield. “It’s got a decided West Coast feel, a little more arranged, a little less improvised.”

The orchestra also will do a warm-up/sound check set that includes Warfield arrangements of material by Miles Davis, Woody Shaw, Wayne Shorter and Stanley Clarke.

Warfield admits that this year, the search for candidates was limited. “I didn’t have a lot of time,” he says. “I contacted a dozen people I knew and invited them to apply. I did not review each application — that would have been a conflict of interest. I had five of my friends who work outside the university do it.”

The second Jazz Composer Contest will be more widely advertised, he adds. “This time, I just wanted to set a template for doing this.”

The New York Jazz Rep. Orchestra, directed by Bill Warfield, presents “The Lost Generation of Jazz,” 8 p.m. Saturday, Zoellner Arts Center’s Baker Hall, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem, 610-758-2787. Tickets: $18; $16 for seniors, and $5 for students.

MELLOW OUT

Olivia Newton-John posed the question most famously with her 1975 hit single and album: “Have You Never Been Mellow”?

If you haven’t and would like to be, or if you have and want to recapture the feeling, two vaunted mellow-mongers from different points on the musical spectrum will be in the area tonight and Friday night touring in support of new discs.

First up is Sound Tribe Sector 9, which will perform at The Trocadero in Philadelphia. The group began as a jam band in Atlanta, Ga., in the late 1990s, working out to instrumental funk and jazz grooves. Since then, STS9 has relocated to northern California and has become more about elongated, electronica-based sound manipulation.

“Artifact,” the group’s first album in five years and fourth overall, was released last week. STS9’s devoted cult will tell you how innovative the group is, and invoke Pink Floyd and Radiohead. Those less taken with STS9 will think the group’s fans spend too much time in elevators.

Next up is Milwaukee folk troubadour Peter Mulvey, who will visit Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem and perform selections from “Kitchen Radio,” his first album of original material in four years (eighth overall) and a reported favorite at WDIY-FM.

Some of Mulvey’s early discs showcase funky guitar work and more rock-oriented material, and he won praise for his interpretations of songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Elvis Costello, Marvin Gaye and Paul Simon, among others, on 2002’s “Ten Thousand Mornings.”

But “Kitchen Radio,” named for the way Mulvey starts each day, is on a different wavelength. Mulvey’s word pictures are reflectively rendered, and at times oblique.

Hopefully Mulvey will cut loose with “29 Cent Head,” a rowdy salvo about the state of the nation.

Sound Tribe Sector 9, with The Perceptionists featuring Mr. Lif, Akrobatik and DJ Fakts One, 9 p.m. today, Theatre of Living Arts, 334 South St., Philadelphia, 215-922-1011. Tickets: $16.

Peter Mulvey, with Pamela Means, 8 p.m. Friday, Godfrey Daniels, 7 E. Fourth St., Bethlehem, 610-867-2390. Tickets: $14.50.

Len Righi, Film/Music Editor

len.righi@mcall.com

610-820-6626

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