A special message in the liner notes of the New Deal's newest record reads, "No sequencers or samplers were used in the recording of this album." This is a bold claim from a band that often sounds more like computer-produced techno than live musicians.

Bassist Dan Kurtz admits that a listener's first reaction may be to question that humans are actually performing all the music themselves. But amidst densely synthesized keyboard sounds, hypnotic bass filtered with mind-bending effects, and fast-paced borderline machine drumbeats, the New Deal is really just a group of three jazz musicians.

The band will be playing Tuesday night at Crowbar, 420 E. College Ave., along with DJ Harry.

The New Deal labels its music "live progressive breakbeat house." Man or machine, improvisational jam band or techno groove masters, the best way to understand the New Deal is to understand where they came from.

The band played its first show together in 1999; the set was completely improvised. The three members — Kurtz, drummer Darren Shearer, and keyboardist Jamie Shields — all had established backgrounds in the Toronto jazz scene. Shearer eventually hired Shields and Kurtz to play with him at a regular jazz/funk gig for which he was constantly changing his fellow musicians.

After realizing that this incarnation might work out, the group moved to a different venue where it had freedom to perform more experimental music.

"(The original style we played) worked, but the music wasn't really the most rewarding. We just decided to freak out and do something different, so we went somewhere where we were able to do something outside of the box," Kurtz said.

The three began working under the name The New Deal and, stepping back from their standard jazz roots, they fused improvisational styles with more ambient electronic dance beats in the same fashion as similar artists the Disco Biscuits and Sound Tribe Sector 9.

Rarely ever having formal songs with boundaries, the New Deal's live sets flow like a house DJ's set, seamlessly evolving from theme to theme as easy as fading over from record to record. Its earliest record, This is Live, was actually a chance soundboard recording of the group's first official show.

"The sound guy happened to record it," Kurtz said. "We went back and listened to it and said to ourselves, 'This is an album, we're a band.' "

Through extensive touring and self-management, the New Deal has built up a name for itself in the Northeast American music scene, as both a hippy jam band and an electronic dance powerhouse. The band also has experience in the business world, as each member originally held split management duties. It even followed up its first live album with two live EPs on its own Sound and Light record label.

After refining some of the general themes that often reoccur in its sets, the band went into the studio to turn ideas into actual songs. The result was the New Deal's self-titled studio album, recently released on Jive records. But turning fragmented riff concepts into full songs involved more than just pushing record and performing.

"By the time the album came around, we had been playing for one to one-and-a-half years," Kurtz said. "We had some good, memorable heads. So we recorded about 60 shows, took the best little musical instances of jams and put them on record. The album is pretty much crystallized versions of the stuff we do live."

The band plans to continue touring and producing new songs and sounds. The New Deal is currently working on remixes of songs already recorded. Kurtz said the band hopes to someday record entirely electronic music that actually does use samplers and sequenced drums, or perhaps all standard rock music.

Most imminently, the band says it is looking forward to playing its Halloween show the day after the Crowbar show, when it will open for rap artists the Roots in Philadelphia.

For the New Deal, this strange mix of genres is just another demonstration of how the band hopes to shape the future of music, which, Kurtz said, looks pretty interesting.

"Live music is never going to be able to exist exclusive of the DJ culture/electronic scene," he said. "But in the long run, people are going to get tired of entirely electronic music. The future of music is where those two worlds meet."