GENE'S JAZZ HOT Played by four cool cats.

It wasn't like Gene Epstein needed another band to play with. The acoustic string bass player was already playing with several other jazz ensembles around town, most prominently with veteran George Foley. And she wasn't really looking to start a group. But Epstein, who's also a visual artist, was looking for someone to play a benefit for SPACES Gallery, and she didn't want to go back to musicians she'd already asked for such favors before.

"You can only ask a musician for so many freebies," she says.

So she called clarinetist Bill Kenney who was playing with her in Foley's band, and guitarist Seth Rosen, whom she'd actually met 22 years ago when their daughters attended the same preschool and whom she'd been playing with in a Western swing outfit called Crazy Rhythm.

"They're both sort of leftish so they agreed to do it," she says. "We had a good time even though my amp died. We each brought our lists and did tunes we all knew. There was quite a bit of overlap."

That might have been that except that Epstein's friend Heide Rivghun, who owns Café Limbo on Larchmere, was looking for a regular band.

"I put together Seth and Bill and we were a trio and she loved it. And the more we played, the larger the repertoire got and the more we got in synch with each other — that communication thing when you anticipate what other people are going to do."

The group, dubbed Gene's Jazz Hot, took a dramatic turn about a year and a half ago when it was celebrating Epstein's birthday at Café Limbo. Peggi Cella, who'd fronted the wildly eclectic Cleveland group Tiny Alice in the late '60s and early '70s, showed up. They'd been Epstein's favorite local band but she didn't really know Peggi.

"I'd met her only once before. But I was a big fan of Tiny Alice in the '70s. I was a bit of a groupie. If they were playing, I'd show up. They were the only band I'd do that for."

Cella got up and sang with the group and, says Gene, "Our jaws dropped. It was magic. It was so nice that we asked her to come back."

With Cella integrated into the ensemble, they decided it was time to get their music recorded.

"People kept asking, "When are you going to do a CD?' so we did," says Epstein.

The group put together a list of everyone's favorite songs and spent two days recording in Kenney's and Epstein's living rooms with producer George Faddoul, who primarily records classical music. In a similar fashion to recording an orchestra, he set up microphones and recorded the group playing together.

"It has more natural sound, but it's harder to mix," says Epstein. "I think it has a sound like you're actually sitting there in the living room listening."

Indeed, there's a cozy, informal quality to the group's renditions of the 15 pop and jazz standards that appear on the CD Hot, which it'll release at Loganberry Books on Larchmere Thursday, August 17. It calls what it does "seriously happy, swinging music," and these mostly up-tempo tunes have an upbeat lilt. It becomes outright comical on "Chicken Ain't Nothin' But a Bird," which it reinvents midway through as "Tofu Ain't Nothin' But a Curd," in tribute to Café Limbo's noted vegetarian fare.

Each member gets to showcase his or her individual talents on tunes like "Lady Be Good," with its series of brief, well-meshed solos that never digress from the song's main point. Cella's sultry vocals star on "Summertime" and "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues," while the bluesy "Sleepytime Down South" and "Spring Cleaning" belong to Rosen's well-worn, old-timey vocals and clipped acoustic guitar. "Nuages" shows off the beauty of Kenney's delicate, airy clarinet, and he sings in both English and French on "All of Me." Even Epstein has a lead vocal on "Moscow Nights," her burnished alto giving emphasizing the mournful edge of the least "seriously happy" track on the disc.

Dark Arena

Alien Factor

(self-released)

For fans who love '80s-style power metal as well as heavier modern metal, Dark Arena will be a treat. The band's thunderous yet intensely melodic music reaches back to classic roots for its influences, modernizing them with a dense, rampaging sound driven by a cyclonic swirl of guitar and enhanced by keyboards that give tracks like "Fear of the Night" and "Somewhere" a massive, symphonic quality that blends well with the foreboding lyrics. The instrumental "Dark Sorrow" effectively displays the band's quiet side. What will doubtless make the old-school metal fans swoon, though, are Juan Riccardo's lacerating, high-voltage vocals — none of that trendy, whisper-to-a-scream stuff. They cut through the band's layered sound and give it laser-like focus. Riccardo'd been a legend in the area for 20 years for his work with Attaxe in the '80s and Torment (Ritual) in the '90s. As his jaw-dropping work on tracks like "Crystallized" shows, he hasn't lost any of his edge or power. If anything, they've only intensified to meet the demands of the more intense music he's doing today. — Anastasia Pantsios

CC Junior

No Silence

(self-released)

www.ccjunior.com

The members of CC Junior might not spend most of their time in a bar, but their music takes the route of a local pub band. No Silence offers a few notable tracks including "Let's Go" and "Whispers." However, there are also a few unbearable numbers such as "Truth and Contradiction," which is full of strange catch-22s like, "I want to make love, but I want to fuck/I want to fuck, but I want there to be passion in it." Uh, okay. Also, the band has replaced melody with repetition, adding to the misery of some very cliched lyrics. — Dave Edwards

CC Junior performs at 10 p.m. Friday, August 18, at Verlie's Cafe (3345 W. 46 St., 216.651.5731).