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HUNTER’S REAL DEAL scene drew out sweatshirted jam-band fans and jazz-nerd graybeards alike. Across town at the Middle East, twenty- and thirtysomethings in performance-art gear — women in vintage dresses and feathered hats, men in suspenders and suit jackets — danced and stomped in the upstairs room to the musical progeny of Dock Boggs and Tom Waits and Federico Fellini. It was a record-release party for the Beat Circus and their new Ringleader’s Revolt (Innova), a five-act bill of which I was able to catch three parts.

I thought the New York quartet One Ring Zero had two accordions up front until I realized that one of them was more like a melodica (wind tube and single keyboard) attached to a toy-piano-like box strapped across the player’s chest. They played little waltzes and rumbas and tangos, their own musical settings of Dave Eggars, Paul Auster, Denis Johnson, and Daniel Handler (best known as the children’s author Lemony Snicket). The strange instrument, it turned out, was something called a Claviola, a now-discontinued experiment by harmonica makers Hohner. It was played by one of One Ring Zero’s two principals, Michael Hearst, who also played theremin. (This is the first time I’ve heard theremin played with jazz phrasing, but then, I haven’t heard a lot of theremin players.) His partner, Joshua Camp, stuck mostly to accordion. There was also an acoustic bassist and a drummer who played two cymbals (one of them a hi-hat) as well as the box he was sitting on (the Spanish percussion instrument the cajón, it turned out). Hearst and Camp sang tunes like Auster’s noirish send-up " Natty Man Blues " : " I gotta get out of Cincinnati/Since I mean to sin wherever I am/Since I mean to sin whenever I can. "

Banjoist Curtis Eller sang songs with an old-time feel and time-traveling lyrics that, with their minor-key melodies, were often unaccountably melancholy. His " Sugar in My Coffin " was told from a 19th-century point of view but mixed up Elvis Presley, Abraham Lincoln, and, apparently, given the references to " séances in the White House, " Nancy Reagan. (Remember that astrologer?) On his self-released Curtis Eller’s American Circus: Taking Up Serpents Again, he plays with a full band and occasional back-up singers, but at the Middle East, he sang alone, accompanying himself with beautifully controlled banjo vamps, adding rhythmic punctuation by leaping and stomping both feet, holding poses with one leg hanging in the air, and twitching his moustache Chaplin-like. At times, Eller seemed ready to attack the audience à la James Chance, but then he’d introduce a song by saying, " This is in G minor, if you want to dance. " For his last number, with the crowd clapping along, he ran laps around the room several times, still playing his banjo.

The Beat Circus, for their part, are virtuosi disguised as amateurs. With a tuba-and-drums rhythm section, they rely heavily on oom-pah rhythms and high theatrics. At one point, banjoist Brandon Seabrook traded solos with alto-saxophonist Jim Hobbs while tuba player Ron Caswell huffed and puffed furious rhythms in the background. Leader Brian Carpenter played slide trumpet and the saw player identified as " Ms. Kitty Heels " (Leigh Calabrese, from openers the Sob Sisters) somehow matched pitches with accordionist Alec K. Redfearn, who in turn manipulated effects pedals to get distorted electric-guitar sounds. When Hobbs took an a cappella free-jazz alto solo, all sputtering shrieks and sustained screams, he got gratified shouts of pleasure — he was fearsome, free, but controlled.

THERE’S BARELY ROOM to mention that Patricia Barber and her quartet were typically captivating at the Real Deal in Saturday night’s late set, whether tearing through original instrumentals ( " Crash " ), giving a menacing spin to the Beatles ( " Norwegian Wood " ), or offering her own noirish revenge tale, " Gotcha " : " Are you surprised a battle ax has an ax to grind? " Barber works those consonants like nobody, and she upsets expectations with her mix of long and short syllables ( " Nor-weeee-gian wood " ), making them swing by holding them just long enough and then cutting them off.