Walking into the Casbah – the busy little club near the airport – during Pruitt Igoe’s performance was like entering a scene in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, where Julee Cruise is singing “Into the Night” at the One-Eyed Jack’s bar. Opera vocalist Molly Wilmont’s lasting vocal chords rattled the walls of the Casbah like they were coming up from Hell; people stood around in a trance and listened to her pleas for understanding. There was an eerie feel throughout the venue.

There were no bodies moshing or dancing on the floor. The music, the sounds, the words, were not a rock, punk, reggae or jazz. Poetry, slogans, prayers and screams, set to distorted guitar effects, sampled sounds, keyboards and a trumpet was the flavor of the night.

Call it performance art, and the genre is always hard to define. A mixture of popular music platforms, reverberation and resonances, go-go dancing and agit-prop sensibility is the show Pruitt Igoe offers, influenced by Lonnie Anderson, Bob Marley and Lenny Bruce.

Front man Ted Washington – local painter, poet and bouncer at Winston’s in Ocean Beach – is the main presence of this act, but it was too short. Less than an hour, he left the audience wanting more. The final piece had two members running around the club, through the observers, wearing soldiers hats and playing tug-of-war with the American flag while Washington screamed, a bit naively, “Terrorism is art!” Yes, yes, we’ve heard all this before, and isn’t there a better, more unique way to protest war and the current government in charge?

Jon Cordova’s guitar playing was less playing and more noise-making, with feedback and indiscernible effects pedal-use; but Andy Geib’s trumpet kept it all together, almost like a percussion instrument (he was sitting where a drummer would normally sit) while Matthew Kerr’s keyboards and samples kept the walls vibrating.

The performance could have been more conceptually cohesive but the “music” and the feel was right on the mark. With a little more work (and maybe even a director or producer), Pruitt Igoe could become a tight act. They can be seen in 2006 playing various clubs, art galleries and special events.