Karbido Performs "The Table" at BAM Fisher Photographs by Ed Lefkowicz The Table The band Karbido, with, from left, Pawel Czepulkowski, Igor Gawlikowski and Michal Litwiniec, performing this work on mundane objects like wineglasses at BAM Fisher in the Next Wave Festival. Karbido means "free choice" in Polish, according to the musicians performing in "The Table," part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. And it's an appropriate name for this group from Wroclaw, Poland, which at first glance seems to use rudimentary tools - knives, coins, wineglasses, a metal bowl - to create percussive sounds. For visual flavor, a candle appears. Such mundane objects are their instruments - even the wood table at which four band members sit. But you soon realize that it is no unassuming piece of furniture. Along some of its sides are mounted strings, which can be played like a horizontal bass; at times, a bow is applied to them for cello-like strains. In shadow, beneath it, are foot pedals, enabling the onstage players (Pawel Czepulkowski, Michal Litwiniec, Igor Gawlikowski and Marek Otwinowski, who goes by maot) to create a range of sound treatments. Lending acoustic warmth is the intimate interior of the academy's Fishman Space, which practically serves as one more instrument. The band's four-channel sound system adds spatial complexity to the numbers, which can encompass busy polyrhythms and long, lyrical swells as they wander stylistically among ambient jazz, Belarussian folk and aboriginal and Middle Eastern idioms. There is tension. And magic. And humor: When a knife was dropped, the members silently stood and congratulated one another with handshakes. At the end of the performance, the quartet at the table were joined by the lighting designer and programmer Tomasz Sikora and the sound designer Jacek Fedorowicz. They deserve the recognition. But for all the fancy electronic embellishments, "The Table" manages to retain its own very human heartbeat. "The Table" runs through Sunday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Fishman Space at BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Place, Fort Greene; (718) 636-4100, bam.org.