Don’t be fooled by the branding statement on Aesop Rock’s resume that reads “hip-hop producer,” Aesop has no use for the Five Elements. Like RJD2 and El-P, his music is more about exposing political obscurantism than bopping heads. The Bostonian’s latest pet project is blues-rock-reviving trio Dirty Ghosts, fronted by wife Allyson Baker. “Battle Slang,” which won raves from the music press in 2009, was a premature taste of the band’s very DIY aesthetic: hallucinating, grime-splattered rock pitched halfway between San Francisco and Muscle Shoals. The more recent and harder-scrabble “Ropes That Way” should get you reacquainted with the group in time for their new album, Midnight Moon.
Sun., Feb. 26, 9 p.m., 2012
