Did someone say Phish broke up? You wouldn't have known it from the tie-dye space dancers bouncing around the Stone Church on Sunday, Oct. 10. This was the peppiest audience I have seen on the Seacoast since Little Feat at the Casino Ballroom. As legendary Seattle band Critters Buggin took their places, a youthful, gleeful crowd huddled around the stage to bend their bodies with the funk. All of a sudden the large Terrapin Station sign suspended from the Church's ceiling seemed to fit.

But to call Critters Buggin a jam band would be a slight to their eclectic groove. It would be more accurate to call their music garage jazz, a funky outgrowth of Seattle grunge that sucks in components of virtually every musical genre.

Before their September release, Stampede, Critters Buggin had gone five years without an album together. Saxophonist Skeric and percussionist Mike Dillon spent much of the time in between touring with Les Claypool's Flying Frog Brigade and then with Garage-A-Trois. Likewise, drummer Matt Chamberlain and bassist Brad Houser kept busy with the New Bohemians in Seattle. Chamberlain also played with such gigantic acts as David Bowie, Tori Amos, Liz Phair, Elton John and Macy Gray.

The Critters are expecting another album in January. Athe East Coast through October before returning to Seattle for a Halloween hurrah. New York City band The Duo, composed of keyboardist Marco Benevento and drummer Joe Russo, are opening each show with their trippy, dissonant jazz.

Setting up on the floor in front of the Stone Church's stage on Sunday, The Duo amped up the audience with noise experimentation. Both instrumentalists tampered with digital-sounding loops to produce twisted acid jazz that at times warped into full-blown fusion.

This is the kind of sound that gets my rocks off, and I almost dug The Duo more than the Critters. Despite their distorted, free-jazz themes, the band had moments of calm eloquence. When the Critters' Mike Dillon joined them on vibraphone, they played an original tune called "Bronco's Blues" that could have been off Miles Davis' "Filles de Kilimanjaro." Afterwards, all the Critters came out to join The Duo, and this, to me, was the most electrifying point of the evening.

Then came an anxious break before the Critters scuttled on stage by themselves.

After a brief, spacey intro, the band dove into a circus romp that got the audience spinning. From there on out, it was one long set of freaky, psychedelic jazz. Packing retro-funk grooves that might have spawned from the Family Stone into their tight quartet structure, the Critters interlaced Blood Sweat and Tears, Santana and John Zorn.

Saxophonist Skeric has clearly taken the lead role in this band, and it's easy to see how his energetic music and personality meshed with the ever-zany Claypool. Flourishing a clear influence in the form of a Sex Mob T-shirt, Skeric flaunted his prowess with a heavily mic'd sax. He also played keys at times, and occasionally rapped unintelligibly into his sax mic.

A highlight of the set was a percussion based tune that riddled the imagination with visions of large primates traversing the jungle. The double-barreled drum action of Dillon and Chamberlain set the barstools a-shakin'. Skeric stepped up to the microphone and with a preacher's diction boomed, "Are you ready for the mountain? Let's go to the mountain!" And off we went, l?-bas, aux les montagnes.

But my favorite tune was one titled "Punk Rock Kid," which Skeric introduced as "a beautiful ballad," after requesting more volume on his sax. For a brief moment, hippies became head-bangers, the vibraphone became a hardcore metal instrument, and Critters Buggin eloquently curb-stomped conventional jazz form.

The set was full of intriguing little quirks. Bassist Houser alternated between a normal electric bass and a narrow upright electric that was plain sexy. I perked my ears like a curious terrier when I heard Skeric sneak in a Thelonius Monk sample. Just when one of the band's more spacey jams would begin to lose me, it would grab me back with a free-jazz foray. I couldn't help chuckling when a listener saw me taking notes and asked if I was writing down the set list.

For the last tune of the set, the band whisked us away to Seattle, where musical innovations are taking place that some folks will never understand. And when it seemed the night was over, the roaring crowd managed to induce an encore, and Skeric returned to the mic to humbly say, "Thank you, cock-sucka mutha-fuckas!"

No, Skeric, thank you.

For more jazz virtuosity at the Stone Church, check out the Factory Jazz Project on Wednesday, Oct. 13.