Head Fake, and the extended family of musicians they continue to interact with, constantly ride the edge of innovation. Although Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix and Parliament-Funkadelic are all part of the mix, what Head Fake members connect with most is a tradition of musical invention. With originality and expertise, the duo has worked with artists ranging from Wayne Shorter to B.B. King to Madonna. But this may be their most experimental outing yet.

Bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun are known best as the rhythm section of Living Colour. It's telling that Mick Jagger latched onto the band early on as producer and mentor. Living Colour's ability to bring black rock into a post-'70s heavy metal vision is similar to the Stones' aim, best achieved on Exile on Main Street, to synthesize diverse American music sources with late '60s hard rock.

Although Wimbish would later join the Stones in recording their Bridges over Babylon CD, his name was first sealed in the canon of pop music with the Sugarhill Gang, which literally put hip-hop on the map. As Steven Daly notes in this month's Vanity Fair, Sugarhill "became the black imprint of the early '80s." It was in Sugarhill that Wimbish teamed up with Little Axe and Keith LeBlanc. Their itch for innovation soon took them to the UK reggae/dub laboratory of Adrian Sherwood, where he and the Sugarhill vets formed Tackhead, which Wimbish accurately claims "touched and created the shape of many varieties of modern music."

Seeing Head Fake on stage is watching hard experimentation in real time. With every tick of the clock, they move between a spectrum of styles while sometimes suggesting new genres in the process. To accomplish this, Calhoun's drum kit and Wimbish's bass guitars are aided by electronic effects mixed by each member while playing. As Wimbish explains, "I think [Head Fake] merges the reality between the band and DJ, truly being demonstrated by two people in its most raw and futuristic form. It's a universal musical experience in motion."

Comparing Head Fake to his previous work with Sugarhill, Tackhead, and Living Colour, Wimbish says, "For me it is total freedom. All the [other] projects are the Head Fake experience. And what is good is that all the other projects are [still] running parallel with Head Fake."

Head Fake's first CD on the Enja label is due to be released any day now, although it will probably take a trip to the United States to see Living Colour in the spring. Tackhead has an upcoming tour in support of an EMI CD release that Wimbish says will be "not with just Tackhead but the whole collective — Adrian Sherwood Sound System, Little Axe, Mark Stewart [and others] ... bringing the entire carnival on the road."