DJ QbertSubmitted photo

First you notice a poster on a lightpole, or maybe you see the listing in the paper or an event page on Facebook: Legendary hip-hop DJ QBert is coming to Bend! To play a gig at the Astro Lounge!

Whoa.

So you go looking online to see what the man born Richard Quitevis has been up to in recent years, and you learn that he’s about to release not one but two brand new albums: “GalaXXXian” and “Extraterrestria.” According to QBert himself, these will be the first official follow-ups to his seminal 1998 record “Wave Twisters,” a concept record built around traditional turntablism, i.e. beat matching, record scratching, etc.

Cool, cool.

But then you hit up www.djqbert.com and are greeted with the most interesting news of all: “GalaXXXian” is an album from Earth that features QBert’s groundbreaking scratching, plus guest MCs like Kool Keith, Del The Funky Homosapien, Mr. Lif, El-P and Bambu. “Extraterrestria,” on the other hand, is “a wide collection of various types of music from other planets and dimensions from around the galaxy … collected by the Galactic Skratch Federation, which is similar to the Grammy committee here on (Gaia) Earth.”

Alright, things just shifted into hyperspeed.

The clips of the two new albums on QBert’s website sound great. They’re packed with plenty of the man’s sturdy beats, squiggly synth melodies, funky breaks and eye-popping scratch skills. If anyone can import music from across the galaxy, it’s QBert.

DJ QBert, with DJ Wicked and Prajekt; 10 p.m. Saturday; $5; Astro Lounge, 939 NW Bond St., Bend; www.astroloungebend.com.

— Ben Salmon